At eighty eight years of age one must expect to factor attendance at funerals into one’s monthly (weekly?) schedule. Pray to God none of these will involve beloved family members or very special friends. But, even if one is spared such loss, as time with its sharp scythe inexorably reaps its mortal harvest the number of funerals grows as one pays homage to those men and women who have peopled the world in which you have lived and loved for so long and who now are gone.