Strangers at the funeral

Today Mum and I went off to Kent to the funeral of my cousin Tracy who very sadly died a couple of weeks ago. She was only 47, so just a year older than me and she'd been battling with cancer over the last year.

We had an excellent journey down to Kent and stopped at the Thurrock services near the Dartford Bridge, for coffee. It was a gorgeous day and really sunny and warm.

We managed to find the church in the village of Swanscombe quite easily. We'd been here before as we both have several relatives buried in the churchyard and in the cemetery opposite. Surprisingly, Tracy was being buried here rather than cremated which has been the norm for quite a while in our family.

When we arrived at the church there was already a large crowd of people waiting outside. We parked up the road and walked down where we saw a couple we knew - Pat and Den used to work at the flats where my Nan lived and they're a really lovely couple. It was great to see them and have a chat.

The service started and we stood on our own in a pew. My Uncle came in with the funeral cortege and a lot of people were crying, in particular, Tracy's two children Jody and Adam who were both barely out of their teens.

It was a lovely service (the vicar was a bit of a hippy!) but when he was talking about Tracy it felt like he was talking about a stranger as both Mum and I had had nothing really to do with her over the last twenty years. Unfortunately we've never really got on very well with my Uncle's side of the family and we did actually wonder whether we would be welcome at the funeral!

After the church service there was a "private" committal in the cemetery but we didn't know whether we would be welcome to go to that, even though a lot of Tracy's friends went along. My Mum spoke to my Uncle but he certainly didn't give the impression that he wanted us to go so we  stayed at the church and spoke to Pat and Den.

Afterwards we went to the local sports club for a drink and something to eat and I marvelled at the side of my family I see very little (maybe in some ways I was thankful!). We left as soon as it was decent and embarked on the long journey home. When we got to the Tunnel we discovered that some things never change...

There were horrendous queues to get through the toll booths and we were held up for quite a while despite it only being 4pm. After we'd cleared the tunnel we had a moderately good journey and it was bliss to find Keith cooking dinner when I eventually got home!