Between my colleague and myself, when Christmas Eve arrives, we will have conducted eleven funerals in 10 days (less if you discount the intervening weekend).

Each funeral was a tragedy, even when death was described as a release. I happen to be with the Apostle Paul that death should be described as an ‘enenmy’. No one who has heard the final ‘wail’ of someone grieving when curtains close or do not close in a chapel following the prayer of committal will not have had their common humanity touched to the core.

I wonder how others cope with such a touching?