What to do when someone dies

I was glad the hospital had given me a booklet. ‘Which’ magazine used to do a little book with the same title as this post, but where my Dad’s copy is I’ve no idea: probably Mum threw it out as unnecessary (!).

So first I had to get in touch with the coroner: because Mum had died in hospital following an operation, the death had been referred to him. The Coroner’s office were a model of helpfulness. They explained the procedures and timings, and they had said a post-mortem would be needed in order to establish beyond doubt the cause of death, and that it had been arranged for the following day (Tuesday – the contact was on the Monday, the day after Mum died). And indeed on the Tuesday at lunchtime the coroner rang to say that it was all done and he could release the death certificate, which meant we could get on with the funeral arrangements and with registering the death: he’d faxed the necessary document through to the registrar.

Meanwhile we’d had some angst as to what to do about the funeral. Mum had originally put in her will that she wanted to be buried, but in fact this was a little inconsistent with her leaving her body to Birmingham University, and there had always been a question mark over whether they would take it. She had then left a subsequent note asking her executors to disregard the clause about being buried: she wanted to be cremated after the hospital or anyone else had finished with the body. I hadn’t known this: if I had, I’d have talked to her about green funerals, which weren’t much known about in 1989 when she made her will. Birmingham University had left a helpful and informative leaflet about bequeathing bodies to them, and amongst other things the leaflet made it clear that if there had been a post-mortem then they could not accept a body in any circumstances. So that option was out: it seemed that cremation was then the expressed wish.

I wasn’t yet convinced: I felt that Mum might well have felt differently in the current awareness of climate change and the need to avoid adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. So with the help of my friend Marlene in Birmingham, I investigated a little further. There is a green burial ground in that part of the world: but although it’s called a ‘woodland’, in fact it’s currently a field. A tree is planted within a year of an interment – presumably you have to wait for the right time of year – so eventually the field will be full of trees. But there is no marking of individual graves: we would not have known where Mum was, only that she was ‘somewhere in there’. We all felt this wasn’t adequate: we need somewhere to meet and bring flowers on anniversaries and go out for a meal together afterwards. So in the end I swallowed the green implications and arranged a cremation: it was, after all, what Mum had explicitly asked for. I’d chosen the Co-op Funeral Service, as being as good as any and one who at least knew about the green funerals: so after registering Mum’s death in Leamington, I went to see them to fix it. We had to go for a date not too near because of nephews flying back from Bahrein and Montreal, but we’d got a tentative date arranged and it proved possible, so I booked it. I had to make other decisions, too, without consulting: did we want a Minister (yes – I didn’t think we could do the service ourselves and remain steady-voiced), what sort of flowers (I chose a spray of lilies that in the end looked lovely, to be from Dad and my sister and me), what about other flowers (family only, donations to RNIB as Mum was blind), notice in the paper (yes, but very simple, listing no relatives lest anyone get upset at being missed out). I said I’d write a tribute to Mum, which I’ll put on here as the next posting: my sister Hilary altered it a bit (the posting will be the original version that I still think is better – my sis hasn’t too much sense of literary style and was going to leave out Mum’s greatest achievement as a young woman, playing in a recital at the Wigmore Hall of which my sister had never heard!!), and suggested that one of the grandchildren (her oldest) might read a poem chosen by her youngest. I agreed to all of that: I wasn’t going to have rifts in the family at such a time. Then the night before the funeral Hilary rang again to say her son would like to read the tribute (he’d loved my original, as did his brother!) and let someone else read the poem! Ho hum… so I rang the vicar who was great about it and fixed it all, and my oldest daughter Clare who agreed to read the poem.

On the day I’d fixed a wheelchair taxi to take my Dad, the first time he’d been in a car for about two years. Hilary and I went with him, her in front with the driver and me in the back with Dad. It all worked OK at the Crematorium, though Scott in the end found it difficult to maintain composure towards the end of the tribute, which was precisely why I’d thought it better to have the Minister read it. It was really good that all seven of the grandchildren were able to be there. Then back to the sheltered housing where Dad still lives, me again with him in the taxi as Hilary was showing a friend the way, for what I’d arranged as tea and sandwiches but where Hilary had insisted on having a glass of wine available (and yes, I had one, I needed it by then!) Dad’s carers were wonderful, looking after him all the time and taking some of the burden off me. They took him back home after a bit as he was feeling tired: and then when everyone was dispersing I asked the family about going out together for a meal, which I’d mentioned long before. But they all had other things to go to, and in the end all Hilary’s family went back to Scott’s – I think they were going to eat at a riverside pub near there, but they didn’t ask me if I wanted to come, and I was left alone with my Dad and our collective emotions. This was the hardest part of the day, and by the end I was praying for the carers to come and put him to bed with his sleeping pill: but of course they were running late because of the funeral and time seemed to drag on endlessly. But eventually they arrived, we tucked him up and I hugged him and kissed him goodnight, and went to watch the world cup, blessed distraction. I felt totally deserted, totally alone: I felt everyone else had come, done their bit, and signed off, but for me there is no signing off, there’s my Dad to look after. At half time I rang Liz, just for a moan and a voice, and she as ever was very calming: and after the match I had another glass of wine and went to bed myself, the end of a long, hard day.