This morning I went to Christine O'Mahoney's funeral. Christine was a cantankerous but kindly and much loved member of the Simon Community in London. Indeed, as one of the speakers at the funeral said, it still hurts to arrive at the Community's house and not to find Christine sitting on the steps, smoking, chatting and berating random - usually innocent - people. She was 87, a remarkable age, given a checkered past that had involved bereavement, alcoholism, estrangement from her family, and homelessness.
Having lost all contact with her own relatives, Christine found a new family in the Simon Community - and there were a good 50 people there this morning to pay tribute. It was one of those funerals where people laughed as much as they cried, and a tribute as much to the Simon Community as to Christine herself. Without those volunteers, she may well have ended up as one of the growing number of people dying alone, unfound for weeks or months at a time, in this supposedly developed, civilised nation.
Having lost all contact with her own relatives, Christine found a new family in the Simon Community - and there were a good 50 people there this morning to pay tribute. It was one of those funerals where people laughed as much as they cried, and a tribute as much to the Simon Community as to Christine herself. Without those volunteers, she may well have ended up as one of the growing number of people dying alone, unfound for weeks or months at a time, in this supposedly developed, civilised nation.
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