Death – a train of thought

Very sadly my uncle died last week, and I am going to his funeral in Kent next week.  Whilst changing the arrangements in my diary so I could travel there and later on whilst chatting to my brother about his arrangements (he has further to go and a new job to manoeuvre around) it struck me how inconvenient death is.  As this thought struck down through me I perceive a bigger truth about my life, about life. Death really is a total inconvenience.  How prepared are we ever for this final event?  My first thought as I board this train of thinking… is   ‘Death exists for me as something that happens to other people.’  The second stop in my train of thought is remembering the people I love who have died, and sadness wells up inside me and spills delicately down over my eye lids. My best friend to die when we hadn’t even left our twenties, my mother before I could show her my children and learn from her wisdom (and yes benefit from her grandmother day care!), and more recently my father ( I can quite easily still feel pain at his absence.)  Next stop I arrive at the comforting thought that they all live on in my memory and my family even more so, as there no doubt they exist in my very blood and bones.  I feel more at peace, then arriving at the final stop, which wryly  echoes my starting place, I think how inconvenient is it for me to consider my own death one day as part of my current day to day living.  No wonder death exists as inconvenience as it reality rudely bursts in on my diary of events.