Last goodbye

 FIL's funeral was few weeks ago. FIL himself told he didn't want to have any fuss, no big gathering, no big flower arrangements... We had a memorial service at the Church, which was attended a lot of people (MIL has a huge family, she had 10 siblings with 9 surviving to adulthood), family, friends, neighbours... 

People were asked to bring just one flower per person/family to lay next to coffin, because FIL would be cremated and all those beautiful arragements would have just gone to waste.  Everyone did as asked - well, there's always first time to everything.

Funeral service is a basically a consentrated mass,  so the priest sings a hymn - this priest can't sing and I got a bit hysterical, you know, he was singing some very touching psalm and so off tune and everything was so sad and he was so off tune I couldn't help laughing and tried to stop laughing and it got just worse and worse. Luckily we were keeping social distance and had masks, so no-one but d noticed. 

We has a smaller gathering after the service, just sandwich cake and cream cake, coffee, tea, cookies etc.  If it wasn't FIL's final wishes and Covid19 we would probably have had gathering closer to 100 people with a real buffet with hot meals... And coffee and cake.

Two weeks after that hb fell on  our slippery driveway and hurt his buttoc and tight big way. He just told me he won't wear his slippers because they are, well, slippery and put his winter boots on. Aaaand down he went. So, for three weeks he has not been able to sit, to drive a car, and for the first week he couldn't even walk, he kind of shuffled.

So, he wasn't able to attend for the laying down his father's ashes. Again there was the same priest,  but luckily we sang only one, very familiar hymn, but I think I was the only one singing with the priest. The grave sits by the lake, it's an old graveyard from the 13th century, and FIL's home  at the narrow headland can be seen, just about 300-400m away. FIL was born on the other side of the lake, just behind that headland, it was an ancient Russian horsefarm, and before that there was a blacksmith. 

Once hb is able to sit in a car I will drive him to the grave, I can drive all the way down to the grave, so there is no risk for him to fall again.

FIL is in peace now, right by his beloved lake.