I have been blessed with some wonderful friends, not only did three of my friends from the Mothers Union at my Church come to be there for me at Dad's funeral, but also Sue and Andy came all the way down from Nottingham. The journey was not without incident (but that's another story, another day) but they overcame it and made the Church on time. It was very hot outside but the Church was reasonably cool inside at that time in the morning and Mum was touched to see how many people had come. My knowledge of funerals in recent years is somewhat limited to either just singing at the ones at our Church, and so obviously we only see the Church service and not the Crem; or to the few family services. My grandmothers was very similar to our Church service followed by Cremation, about which I remember little; both Peter's parents just had a service at the Crem. The only other one recently was for Lizzie's Neil up in Taddington. I thought people might be interested to compare this particular service to their own experience or perhaps ponder what might have happened to their ancestors. My parents are High Anglican - they belong to a Forward in Faith Church (some interesting Google results for this) - which is very close to Catholicism and so the service(s) were very different for me. The coffin was taken to the Church the evening before at 5pm for a service of Vespers (Order of Service before a Funeral Service). The coffin was then draped with a pall (in this case blue velvet) and a crucifix laid on it for the night. The family and an y other congregation then lit votive candles that were on a stand at the head of the coffin. This was Sunday evening and the next service was on Monday morning just gone, at 10.15. We all arrived at the Church before the Service - no need to wait to follow the coffin in, of course, and the undertakers merely brought in the flowers from the family and the votive candles had been removed. We then had a Requiem Mass with much swinging of incense and ringing of bells (not alien to me as I had been a Catholic in my teens). We had two priests concelebrating the service - two long standing family friends. Towards the end of the service there were the usual prayers said over the coffin and Mum, my sister and I and our husbands stood around the coffin too whilst it was blessed and then we followed it down the aisle to the hearse. We then had a little while so that we could mill around and greet people before we left for the Crem at Eastbourne. Dad had always been a country man born and brought up in Sussex and even in his working life he never had a desk job, but could be out and about. What he would have loved was that the hearse followed along the promenade, in front of their flat, and then it went along the narrow winding lane on the edge of the shingle beach all the way towards Norman's Bay, along the south of the Pevensey Levels. Along the way we passed a lone piper - now I am sure this had not been arranged but it seemed appropriate, the more so since Dad has a Scottish father!!! Then we went inland to Pevensey and then to Eastbourne Crem. At the Crem there were just the 12 of us and the two priests - the Committal just took a few minutes; but oh, those curtains ......... Afterwards we had a small family lunch as Dad would have hated a "wake". We have decided that the ashes will be interred at another parish church in Bexhill (where one of the priests is the incumbent) as Dad did not want his ashes interred in a town centre church, but we also wanted somewhere where Mum could get to fairly easily. And so the finale - 15.12.1918 to 03.07.2006 and of those 59 years 353 days wed. Liz