a wake

Family Sunday lunch for burial of George the companion rat.A simple but sincere ceremony amid a subdued but otherwise cheerful reunion of parents and children.Afterwards a son and daughter played chat roulette on the internet, meeting random people from anywhere in the world.
Earlier  I had been reading Kurt Vonnegut, who it is well known was a prisoner of war during the fire bombing of Dresden,describing the last days of The Republic of Biafra.He reports the behaviour of  people who had no hope and yet maintained civility as the Nigerian military,heavily armed by powerful countries,closed around them.
I remember changing for theatre in Abergavenny(in Wales) with another resident doctor from Nigeria in1984.He was humble and quietly spoken .When he took off his shirt he had deeply furrowed scars in each shoulder. I asked him what had happened to him.He told me with a shrug and polite smile that he had been caught in machine gun crossfire while running for safety in a war that I hadn't even known existed.This saved his life by removing him from the battle(such as it was without ammunition on his side) so he wasn't aggrieved at the injury but remorseful that he had lived while his companions had been killed.This is called survivor guilt,which also afflicted Kurt Vonnegut.
And yet ,while we still live, we are all survivors.