Yellow roses and other yellow and white

flowers were laid out across the top of the coffin. There were brightly coloured pictures drawn by young children right around the church.
R.... was a grandmother who loved her garden, loved flowers and, above all else, loved her family and other people - unconditionally.  Yes, another funeral yesterday. A full Catholic Mass for the sister of our good friend P....
Middle Cat and I went. It would have been too much for the Senior Cat to handle. P... understood that.
R... and I were friends too. She had wit and a very incisive mind. I enjoyed both. The Senior Cat thoroughly enjoyed conversation with her about a wide range of issues. 
She was one of those women who, born a generation later, would almost certainly have gone on to work in a profession of some sort. As it was she was the secretary at a school for most of her working life. She undertook courses in other things to better do the job - and then courses in archaeology and anthropology for her own interest. 
She brought up six children of her own on a very tight budget - and still found room to foster other children from troubled backgrounds.
It was one of those occasions in which it was clear that the priest did know her. The church was the one in which she was baptised, confirmed, married and then farewelled. It was rare for her to miss a Sunday. When she travelled she found other places of worship but, apart from that,  only the severest illness prevented her from attending her own.
For all that her views about religion were - shall I say "robust"? They were not unthinking. Watching her two sisters go through the ritual of placing a cloth on her coffin - and later removing it - I wondered how much she, as the eldest, had influenced them. P... is a nun - although it would be difficult to recognise her as one. I could not help thinking that fifty-four years ago when she entered the convent she did not expect to even go home again. Had her sister's funeral been held then she would have been given permission to attend but another nun would have been at her side - and the service would have been in Latin. Now P... travels alone. She does not own a habit. Her friends include non-Catholics. Above all she has been free to help her older sister in the last few difficult months of her life.
Her sister approved of the changes. She was someone who looked forward, not back. There was someone in the gathered company who had a magnificent singing voice, the sort of voice that can lift and carry the generally appalling singing to a different level. I don't know who she was and I didn't get a chance to thank her but it made me even more appreciative of a life well lived and lived to the full.