Mum died in the early hours of Friday morning, and I don’t remember much of the weekend that followed. After three awful weeks of not knowing what was going to happen next, not being in control of anything, I was exhausted but unable to rest… Conscious that there was so much to do, conscious that everything was different. I felt different. I couldn’t believe two people could just not exist anymore. We went out for supper on the Friday night, to a local pub. I wanted the familiar and I wanted distraction. We didn’t stay long, but the wine took the edge off things, and it was warm and cosy, and filled with normality, which I craved.
On the Saturday we went into a local market town for a couple of hours. Again, I was trying distraction… I was exhausted, though, so we were home by lunchtime. The weekend was a blur of trying not to think, but needing to think. Of wondering how anyone can possibly carry on with life after a death. Two deaths, in 8 days… I felt I had been taken to the very brink of life myself. That week with my Mum had been so full of love, so tranquil, so unearthly, to be honest. It had all felt so unreal…as if the hospice itself belonged to a different world, and time in there was different from time in the real world. It’s so hard to explain, but I felt as if I’d been in some sort of no man’s land, suspended between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and I wasn’t ready to join the living world yet. I wanted to go back to the peace of the hospice, the comfortable chair beside Mum’s bed.
I meticulously planned the trip to my parents’ home town, arranged for the following day. My fiancé had arranged to have the day off work so I didn’t have to face it alone. I was lucky – as a teacher and because it was the run up to Christmas, I was on holiday until the first week of January.
I made notes on my iPad… All the things I didn’t want to forget to do. There is so much to organise after a death. Things that can’t wait… You can’t just leave a body in a morgue or a hospice while you have a silent but dramatic breakdown because both your parents suddenly no longer exist, because your life as you knew it no longer exists… You have just 5 days – under normal circumstances – to register a death, and for that you need the “Cause of Death” form signed by the doctor. Doctor’s are busy, hospitals are busy; this is not easy… Living 2 hours drive away added to the complications – it all had to be done in one day if I didn’t want to have to deal with it on my own, and I didn’t. Well, my fiancé was the chauffeur for me – everything else I had to do myself. I was the next of kin, so there was no choice, really. There wasn’t anyone else, and anyway, I owed it to them. I was determined to do everything right and on time, in honour of them. My plans for the day were:
1) Go straight to their flat just to collect Dad’s clothes. Mum and I had decided on a particular blue shirt because it suited him so well. Grey trousers, dark blue tie. Mum said she just wanted a shroud… That wasn’t a conversation I’d imagined having – “Mum, what do you want to be buried in?”. She chose a shroud because all her clothes were far too big for her. Dad’s were, too, but it was nice to plan together what he should wear, and I think he’d prefer his own clothes to a shroud.
2) 11am: Funeral director to finalise. Payment… Need to somehow pay the deposit myself and ask for an invoice for solicitors. Rosaries*
3) 12.30-1.30pm free… Sort flat? Call at chemist before they close. Leave money for Auntie. Empty bin and fridge. Pack their wedding album. Leave Dad’s ring for Uncle ready to give to him on the day of the funeral. Leave things together for Auntie… Vacuum cleaner, toilet walking frame etc.
4) 2pm collect death certificate from hospice doctor. Take thank you card and chocolates for staff – call at supermarket on the way there.
5) Appointment with registrar at 3.30pm. Make sure you write down postcode for TomTom.
6) 4.10pm ish drive to solicitors – make sure you write down postcode for TomTom.
7) 4.20pm back to undertakers with death certificate so they can collect Mum’s body.
8) 5pm finished… Meal out to avoid traffic? Leave at 6.30pm???
9) At home: – notify people in parents’ address book.
Need to decide for funeral:
Hymns
Poem
Leaving music
Who will speak???
Location of plot
Newspaper advert
Headstone – arrange/choose if not exact wording
*Mum had been a Methodist, so why did I mention “Rosaries”? Well, when she had been young, she’d worked in a Catholic school and liked the idea of rosaries. So, when one of the Chaplains at the hospice came to visit her, and used a rosary, she liked it. So, to comfort her, he gave her two plastic rosaries, one white and one black. She was wearing them when she died and wanted to have one put around Dad’s neck, one left around her own for the burial. So, neither of them a Catholic, yet both were to be buried wearing a plastic rosary…
I did a lot of Internet browsing that weekend, trying to find answers to questions I didn’t even know how to ask… One poem I found comforting was “Do not stand at my grave”… I knew the poem before, of course, but it had never meant anything to me until that weekend. Also, Mum was called Mary Elizabeth, just like the poet.
Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there.
I did not die.
Mary Elizabeth Frye