Do you get depressed if you have lots of funerals to do?
Here, thank goodness, we don't have so many funerals here in succession, it'd be about once a month. In Kilburn, we would have about three or four a week. What upsets me about them is that I can't give as much time to them as I would like to. That's what I would get upset over sometimes, and in order to cope with that - what we did in Kilburn - was that we set up some lay people as a bereavement group, there was about fifteen people involved. It was an ecumenical group also and they would then follow through with families. Because, we're on to the next funeral, sadly speaking. And, you can't really give that time that the person needs even after the funeral more so than before. So, the bereavement group continues that and that's a Christian outreach into the community, a need that's there. It is difficult, when you have funerals, when you have a lot of emotions to deal with. And, that's why I think my community is very important. The community is a place where I can say, "I'm not feeling great today, because I just had to listen to this sad story about a mother or a husband or someone who has died after a long illness." The community is there and listen, they listen to me. I can unburden whatever grief I'm carrying. And, it's important for us that we bring it to prayer. When we're in common prayer together, we would pray, very often, we would pray for families that we're accompanying. And, that in itself is about trusting that the Lord is doing the work. It is difficult, but then I need find ways of channeling that, those energies that I pick up, so that it doesn't drown me or get me down and depressed. I'm not a depressive person naturally so my thing is to make sure I'm in tune with the pain of the people, because I can be in tune with the joy and all that's great. Sometimes missing out on the pain that the person is having. So I need to make an effort to do that. And, sometimes the community will help me in that.
