Photos from the Funeral

As you can imagine in these Coronavirus times the challenges of creating a physical and virtual funeral have had their challenges. Here we present some photos - often screengrabs so please excuse the quality - of the lovely procession of the hearse down Anna's street with neighbours coming out to witness her passing and a few photos of the ceremony in the crematorium. Whilst wanting to give a sense of the ceremony and setting it is maybe also important to give a sense of how it was to experience the funeral over the virtual airwaves many hundreds or thousands of miles away from the physical funeral.

There is also a film of the ceremony on the next page of the website.

The ceremony: Anna arrives in her the wicker coffin

The ceremony in the Crematorium chapel: Roger reads Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

"Life brought her many treasures and she gave them back one hundredfold. In her leaving let us be thankful for that life and its riches. Go softly and with our love everlasting."

Anna had a bash at basket making so it seemed right to get her a willow coffin.

The ceremony relayed via Zoom arriving on the final leg in the Casentino in Arezzo Province by radiowave broadband. George giving the intorduction to the commemoration.

Onward relay station for the ceremony - from a Zoom feed to Italy and by WhatsApp to Edinburgh.

A virtual reception was held. A strange but also rich experience. Glasses were raised to Anna from Seattle, Boston, Amsterdam, Arezzo Province, Penzance, York, Edinburgh and a canal boat in Oxford.

After Mum died it was if she had come back home to the house in Oxford. This was the house where she lived the longest period of her life. And these were the clothes in which she went away forever laid out in the bedroom she loved.

A special thanks to Billy Barraclough for the funeral photos on this page and for live streaming the service through his phone.

To: Video of the Funeral Service