Who said your perspective on life changes when your parents are no longer alive?

It makes life feel terribly short.

You reflect on the life of the person who has just passed away (or is on that path)

Twice last year I create a 'Book of Condolences' for colleagues which in the immediate week and then for a few months gather some 100 or 70+ comments respectively.

As someone said, 'funerals are for the living'.

Sorry to sound downbeat, but I do wonder 'what is the point?' Short of completing the animalistic duty of reproduction. Growing old can be enjoyed with marriages, births and memorable anniversary but there comes a point when even the grandchildren are forging lives of their own and the generations forget that the oldest generation is still with us.

Especially if you are part of what I call the 'splat generation', those kids who went away to university (when the government and local authority was paying for it) and don't go back.

On reflection I'd have liked to have bound our extended family more closely, that having us in the same town/region or community would have benefited everyone, not least from the love, encouragement and 'life-lessons' we pick up from each other's behaviours (mistakes especially).