Gratitude is the First of the Virtues

So said Dietrich von Hildebrand.

I played for a funeral the other day - All Souls Day, appropriately enough. Well, I have never been so profusely thanked in my life for anything. It's really rather humbling. Music is an extraordinary thing; it has an undefinable and unpredictable power. But here there was an added factor.

My wife volunteered me for this one. The funeral was for the mother of a man she works with. Mary knows I don't like her to volunteer me for these things. So she never does. If the family doesn't want a piper, it makes it difficult, or at least uncomfortable, for them to refuse the offer. This time for reason she can't explain she felt she had to make the offer. The man practically cried. His mother had been a piper in her youth. She still had her pipes and some of her music.

So on All Souls Day I played another piper to her rest. That was a good day.