2013-06-26 “Change”

 A quick search on the internet for the meaning of the word change gave me this:   “to give a different position, course, or direction to”.  When I think about the way that life was thirty years ago and the way it is today I am amazed.   Thirty years ago when I was in Humber College, I was one of the lucky students to have my own Smith-Corona portable typewriter.  Some of my friends hung around the typing lab hoping to persuade someone in the secretarial course to help with assignments that needed to be typed…today students carry laptops to class.  Years ago when my children were born I got to hold them in the hospital for the first five days of their lives only after I had gowned and wore a face mask and when anyone else came to see them they had to look through a window in the nursery for the glass incubator with the pink or blue card that said “Baby Eskritt”…today they would have been home by supper time.

In the past number of years, I have seen a lot of changes in the way we carry out Funeral Services, and I think that’s great.  In 1978 when my sister Bev died, I watched as many people passed by her casket and nobody touched her.  I remember thinking that maybe we weren’t supposed to touch someone when they died, but I wanted to.  I was afraid to ask, so as everybody was leaving the night before Bev’s funeral, I made an excuse to go back into the room by myself and I placed my hand on hers.  I wanted to kiss her on the cheek but I stopped short of that, afraid that someone would see me.

I’m glad that we’re a more informed society today.  When I make funeral arrangements, I try to encourage people to listen to their hearts and to ask any question that’s on their mind.  There’s no such thing as a silly question.  If you follow your heart, you will live with the peace that you did it right.  It’s the things that you don’t do that you will regret.