Juha's uncle's funeral

Last weekend we had Juha's uncle's funerals in Outokumpu. Outokumpu is in north Karelia. Juha's mother is originally from there and Juha has a little place of his own there too. Outokumpu has become a familiar town to us because Juha's parents use to live there for ten years or so. Now Juha's mother lives in Hanko and his father is dead.

The funeral was in a local orthodox church. I really enjoyed the ceremon. Orthodox church is very close to my heart even though I don't belong to it. In Ilomantsi there is a big orthodox church which located very close to my home. Every summer I attended a children's camp arranged by orthodox church. Also many of my friends were (and I guess still are) orthodox. At least on Easter we would go to the orthodox church to enjoy the night liturgy. Even though I love good bible studies at church somehow the liturgy of orthodox church also brings God's presence to me very strongly. So I was happy the funeral was in orthodox church because I've missed it a lot!

After the ceremon in church we gathered to eat together and i was asked to sing a song there. I'm always ready for that and I felt it was a priviledge to sing there. I chose a song by Oskar Merikanto who is one of my favourite Finnish compousers. The words in a song are Eino Leino's who is a very famous Finnish poet. When we got to Outokumpu after driving over 500 kilometers I realized that i forgot the notes to home. That's just so typical of me! If there is an easy way of doing things I somehow miss it. Fortunately I have music loving colleagues and one of them had the note. So I wrote the lyrics done on phone and of course I new the tune. There wasn't going to be accompaniment anyway. My husband said that he can't stop admiring my way of dealing with disasters which I create. Sometimes I just get very frustrated with myself. Maybe someday I will learn to keep my things in order - or more likely not...

I never got to know Juha's uncle very well so personally this wasn't a hard funeral. On the contrary I enjoyed meeting with Juha's side of the family because I don't know it very well. I've been lucky because I haven't had to give up any dear person away yet. Juha's father and my grandfather have been the closest to me who have already died but in their deaths you could see God's timing very well and I felt very comfortable with those.