During the past 10 years I have had the privilege of conducting more than 500 funerals with the Humanist Society Scotland. This has allowed me to share feelings of sadness and loss with the bereaved, but I have also regularly encountered other factors at play, including humour, anger, fear, anxiety, courage, resentment, wonder and denial. This book contains short stories and poems drawn from that experience, as well as something of what I was exposed to while working as a doctor. Although each item is unique, lying behind them all is a shared sense of humanity. There is humour, pathos and reflections which, hopefully, will cause the reader to pause for a while and consider the really big questions in life.