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Of death, hospitals and music

By Dr H0ffm4n (Tue Dec 06, 2005 at 11:52:51 AM EST) (all tags)

There's nothing quite like a funeral to make you re-assess where you are in life. Or so I expected last week when I went to the funeral of a co-worker who had died of a brain tumour.

When Major Midget went and broke her arm at the weekend I got the feeling that the fates were truly realigning against the Dr H0ffm4n apathetic way of life.

Today's page lengthening is brought to you by Music bought since July.

Funeral
It was a cold, windy and wet day last Thursday when we buried R.

I attended the Mosque beforehand while prayers were said. It was quite dignified at that point, although it was disconcerting to have the body on display in and open casket in the porch.

The Islamic funeral/burial was shockingly brutal and in-your-face. There's no coffin. The body is simply wrapped in white cloth and was carried in a casket but lifted out for the burial. The women were kept at a distance. A small bright yellow JCB was parked at the graveside. The male relatives carrying the body are not trained in the art and so the balancing act looks farcical as they struggle to keep from dropping the body. After a few shovels of earth were thrown over the body, the JCB moved in and filled in the grave with the rest of the clay while the mourners stood by and washed their hands. Then a flat bed Sherpa van backed up and dumped the topsoil on. Then we left and went our each way home.

I had expected the funeral to jolt me from a certain lethargy that I'd gotten into in the last six months. I did think of R's body lying in the cold ground of the dark memorial field while it chucked down with rain that night. The effect is gentler than I had expected.

Busted
While at an ice-skating birthday party on Saturday, Major Midget managed to break her arm. The ice-rink at Alexandra Palace does not have a full time first aider. Each of the staff have a basic first aid training. Not fantastic for dealing with a 10 year old who has clean snapped both the radius and ulna and is in agony. They have no pain killers apart from Entonox (50/50 gas & air).

I arrived about 40 minutes after the fact to find her in tears in the first-aid hut, waiting for an ambulance. The ambulance took over an hour to arrive, but that's not too bad when priorities of drunken people's injuries on a Saturday afternoon are taken into consideration. The ambulance came at 430pm and had not been back to the ambulance station since 7am. Apparently the cold snap had brought on a lot of runny noses that absolutely require a 999 emergency response.

So Saturday night was spent at the Whittington Hospital. Service was good again. But there were a few others complaining.

Full discussion: http://www.hulver.com/scoop/story/2005/12/6/115251/472