"She's inside - playing the piano"

were the words that greeted me as I arrived at the church yesterday.

Yes, she was. There on the screen was a video recording of the friend we had come to farewell. She was playing a duet - a loud, cheerful duet. She was laughing, full of life. It was the way she would want to be remembered.  

Going to anything like that is difficult at the best of times. Right now it is even more difficult than usual but I wanted to be there. It was a memorial service rather than a funeral. It was right for her. It is what the Senior Cat has asked us to do for him.

As we went in to the church we had been asked to take one of the many scarves or shawls she had owned. I had made more than one shawl for her. Someone ahead of me was wearing one of them. It was a strange sensation to see her wearing it. One of her grandsons had tied a scarf  pirate style around his head. Somehow it looked right even though he was wearing a suit. I don't usually dress specifically for a funeral or a memorial service but this time I put on a blue jacket that L... had told me more than once that she liked. If it had been a size larger she might have "borrowed" it from me.

Unlike the funeral I recently attended in the same church this was not a requiem mass. Instead this was a reflection of an artistic, musical life. L... trained as a nurse. She worked under Vivian Bullwinkel - the only nurse to survive the massacre on Bangka Island in 1942 - and always said the experience taught her so much. L... was compassionate, empathetic - and chronically late for everything except work.

She was a wife, a mother, a friend, a concerned neighbour and much more. She was an artist. Some of her art work was on display for people to see. 

And she was a musician...giving us all a concert even when she was no longer physically among us.