Barry shared some memories of conducting his first funeral when he was a young man of 17, that of a West Indian child and of how he realised different cultures mourn in different ways; of attending to the the servicemen who have lost their lives in distant lands like Iraq and Afghanistan (where he or his colleagues stay with the body from the moment they arrive at the mortuary until he/she arrives home); of passing through towns like Wootton Bassett which for many years had the responsibility of welcoming home British war heroes and had done so of their own accord in their bit to honour the fallen men and women and their grieving families (Barry spoke of how he was choked with emotion when leading a convoy of hearses once, and the crowd broke out into spontaneous clapping - see this Daily Mail article about the voluntary service Wootton Bassett residents have given); of the day he received a letter from the PM's office about his nomination for an OBE (it was on the day of his father's funeral; distracted and grief-stricken, he put the letter into his father's coat pocket and forgot about it); of the mother who stayed with her son's body over several days at the funeral parlour and later informed Barry she was a clairvoyant and told him things only he could have known...
Fran
13 September 2011