So the doctor said that he would do the paperwork and we assumed he’d be back. So we sat there for an hour and a half. We, we rang my stepdaughter, who was on her way, said, don’t come in, darling. Dad’s died. Come here. Come to my house and we’ll be there as soon as we can And after about an hour and a half my stepson went to see what was happening and apparently, we could have gone at any time, that we thought we were waiting for the certificate, not the death certificate not the death certificate but the certificate to say that he’d died that we needed to get the registration. But, apparently, they said, No, the bereavement They get they then gave us an hour and a half, they gave me a leaflet about the bereavement office and said that they would be in touch and then we’d have to go back in to get the certificate to take to the registrar and because Donald had died out of [county] we had to go to [town] to register the death.

I’d been home about twenty minutes when the bereavement office rang me to say they had it. So I said, Well, we’ll have to come in tomorrow and do this And that’s what we did. End of story.

Did you have to sort out all the legal stuff, the death certificates and that sort of thing?

Yeah, yeah. I remember I think it must have been the next day or the day after, there was this just this huge anxiety that was hanging over my mum about, There’s so much paperwork. There’s so much paperwork And I just knew that I wanted to help and I still wanted to have some control over everything. I didn’t want to sort of lose any of the control that I’d had and, probably, filling that gap of where I was sort of like there to help and there to care. So I did the best I could, and I’m not very good with the sort of legal work and the paperwork stuff but because they had the business together there was a lot of and the bank cards and there is so much stuff that a lot of that my sister helped do. And my mum did the best she could and I said, I’ll register the death You know, straight away and everyone said, Do you want me to come with you? Do you want me to come with you and hold your hand And I said, No, no, no. I’ll go on my own. I’ll do it by myself And I think I wanted to have my name on the death, on the death certificate, daughter, [Name]. I don’t know why but I think there was something about me being able to do that and certify that he was gone, that he was dead, that sort of was a bit therapeutic for me, in a way, I think.

Yeah, I had some help from his best friends, who were absolute rocks. I mean I couldn’t have done it without them. They did a lot of the paperwork but, yeah, I mean I think it’s something as symbolic and as kind of, what’s the word? It kind of corporate, not corporate but just so formal as signing a death certificate, I found really bizarre, that process wasYou know, you could just see the list of other people who had died that weekend, you know. it’s just really like a punch in the stomach and that’s only something the next of kin can do, so, you know, I found that kind of, that side of the, it is a process, when someone dies. There’s a lot of papers that need to be signed. There’s a lot of formality. There’s a lot of, you know, small things like phone bills and electricity and everything and shutting it all down and bank statements and closing the bank account, which is so final.

Yeah, I had help with that but essentially, the next of kin does the majority of that, or at least signs everything. And they were very good to be as discreet about it, my friends, as possible and just say, Just sign this You know. Because they know that’s painful, to do that.

Were there practical things you then had to do?

Yes. We obviously had to go and register the death and I went with my father to do that at the nearest sort of registry. That was, and that’s bizarre, because you’re sitting with people who are registering births. And that’s a, in some ways it’s lovely, in some ways it’s lovely because you are sitting with people who are celebrating, I can remember sitting next to a man who was celebrating the birth of twins, and he was in a complete state of shock. And, and it was also in a place where there were people who were migrant, immigrant populant, who were coming in to get various other paperwork around that. And you’re all sitting together in a waiting area, very squashed up and it was very hot as I said. A very hot summer. And you’re registering a death. At one level there was something quite nice because as you know in death, there’s life. Things go on. Life happens. So, I wasn’t appalled by it, but it was a very strange thing to be in that mixture of a place.

But the actual then going in and registering it and doing that was dignified. I couldn’t again say that it wasn’t.

And then we had to do the process to get her buried. Jewish people get buried very quickly. So we needed to sort that out.

Yeah I mean the nurses were there so they, they did that for me and then I think they phoned the GP straight away. And at some point she must have come round to officially declare Karen as dead and to fill in I think a bit of paperwork at that time. Not that I had to be involved in any of that but she needed to come in and sort of ascertain that she was dead. And which, I didn’t mind, I knew that they’d have to do that.

And then did you have to go and register her death the next day or, did you have to go somewhere?

Well you’re given a time period of maybe two weeks, that was that was pretty awful I must admit because, well there’s a whole new story of doing that because it’s at the same registry office down the road that we registered our marriage in.

And the woman dealing with me, I went in with my sister and the woman dealing with me just was socially inept and she was she was just utterly clueless. I had a certificate with me signed by the doctor, the original certificate and the woman said that she would need to take that. And I wanted to keep it. Because it was symbolic, this was my wife’s death.

And she said, Well you’ll get a copy blah, blah, blah and I you know and I was saying, Well no, I don’t want, I want, you know I’d like this one

And she’d already just been very officious; I mean the whole thing was just very officious. You know considering I was registering my wife’s death, there was less than, well I don’t know it was only days previously, their attitude was you know the same as when we were, register your marriage.

They were very officious about this being a very legal thing and just inhuman. I mean I was gobsmacked. And, and it started to upset and annoy me, you know being a bloke, being upset actually made me frustrated.

So I think I was already feeling very sort of just awful about the whole thing. And then she started arguing with me about whether I could keep this thing, and I was saying, Well could you do a photocopy for me

And the way that she dealt with it was just very abrupt and very defensive. I mean she, you know, I don’t want to get too psychological but she was so defensive that she got aggressive with me about, This isn’t your property and blah, blah, blah. And it was the most awful, awful exchange I’ve ever had.

Given the circumstances and we didn’t have a sort of stand-up row, I was just sort of being assertive, but it was just very, very disappointing. So, they did send me, I never filled it in but I wish I had, they sent a questionnaire a few weeks later about, How was your experience

Oh.

And, I really, if I’d had more time I really could, would have liked to have spelt out to them how they need to do some training. You know. But anyway.

And we, he took me to the undertakers and that was a kind of surreal oh, experience, you know, I think I thought to myself, Oh my goodness. I can’t believe I’m in an undertaker’s place I’ve never been in an undertaker’s place in my life, you know. It had always been someone else’s responsibility, you know. My eldest brother sorted out the arrangements for my parent’s funerals. My brother-in-law had sorted out the arrangements for my parents-in-law’s funerals and I was used to being the youngest in my family and now, all of a sudden, I was the last one left. And I had to make decisions.

So we sat at this table and there was a side of me that actually, you know, inappropriately wanted to laugh because if my husband had been there we’d have been joking and saying, My goodness, you know. There’s, what is this? Is this the, you know, these people are like the Addams Family [laughs]. And there was a there was a grandfather clock chiming somewhere, you know. It was all sort of a bit gloomy and we sat round the table and they said they gave me a catalogue and they said, what kind of a coffin did I want and I’d said, Well, you know And they said, Well, this is the less expensive end of the range and that’s the more expensive And I just turned the page to the most expensive and I said, I’ll have that And I just did the same, whatever choice I was given I would say the best and the most expensive [laughs]. And, at the same time, there was this questioning voice in my head off, Yet can you afford it Because he was the one who looked after the finances, not me. He’d always looked after the finances but my thinking at the time was, Well, he deserved the best. He deserved the best so he’s going to get the best

We were planning that year to have a combined party because we were both sixty. We were both going to be sixty that year and our daughter was going to be thirty, our younger daughter. So it’s and we were going to have a combined party and we had a caterer, our favourite caterer, who had done family occasions before and we were going to ask him if he would do the party. And I rang him up and I said, We were going to ask you to do the party but really sorry, but would you do a funeral And he went, A funeral And I said, Yeah, I’m sorry to tell you, you know, my husband’s died And he was really shocked because he and my husband got on really well and he said, Oooer, I’ve never really done a funeral but since it’s his funeral, we’ll do it

So, yeah, so they did and yeah, that all passes off almost in a, you know, I couldn’t be specific about it because I was in a bit of a daze to be honest. I know that I know that they keep giving you choices, you know, and later on, it occurs to you that you might have made a different choice but I just I made a choice at the time, you know, and they said did I want him to be kept overnight in the church, you know, and I can’t ask him. I can’t say, Would you like to be kept overnight in a church You know, [laughs] so I thought, Ooh, well, what if someone breaks into the church and then, you know, it would be and, you know, there are some funny people around at night And it felt insecure so I said, Oh, no. Keep him in the undertakers You know, and, Would you like him to be brought to the house beforehand So I said, Yes, oh, yes Because he loved his home and I know he’d miss his home and so they did.

So did you find that organising the funeral fell to you?

It, well, it did we did, my brother and I, yes, we took it on. We’re rather a do it yourself family and we did do it all ourselves and my brother actually trained as an actor originally, so he was, he wanted to officiate and, and we simply had, we had it, Mum and Dad just liked things simple really and we had it in the little chapel in the local cemetery where the burial was. So it was sort of old fashioned these days but sort of, because actually, as it happens, the crems are a long way from here so although Dad might have preferred to be to be a crem because he said that once. One; I don’t think he was that bothered and two; for Mum, it was it meant that she could be at Dad’s funeral, that it was just local because it would have been too far to travel to the to the crematorium, as it happens, from here.

And my brother and I, we just, you know, we both we chose poems and wrote things and got cousins to say things and didn’t involve anybody else actually, apart from friends and family. Obviously, it was a funeral director, who was lovely and local and very good and we did the catering ourselves and it worked very well for Dad. And it was a nice chapel because Mum and Dad obviously, not being in their home area and being the age they were, there weren’t a whole lot of friends of theirs who could attend. But the carers, I mean the agency gave, I found out the agency gave the carers time off to come to the service, which I think is fantastic. I still haven’t written to thank them.

So they were just very personal services and then, because it was in a chapel and a cemetery, it was just a short drive down to the actual woodland burial site and Dad conveniently died, he liked things efficient. He conveniently died in March, which was when they put the, one of the two months they put the trees in and at before the end of the tax year, so that was very helpful [laughs]. And Mum, obviously, was at Dad’s and we just did a personalised for her but with, with her music that she’d chosen. And it wasn’t too snowy at that point so it was yeah, can’t say a rerun but it was, you know, it worked so well and we were happy with what we did for Dad that we just followed the same pattern for Mum, which just felt right really.

And is your life getting back to normal now or not? How do you feel about things?

Yeah, I suppose now. I mean I was, the first sort of week after, there’s just nobody prepares you. As much as, my mum was very organised and she’d got life insurance and she’d got a will and she told me what she wanted at the funeral and what flowers and all the rest of it that’s, you know, nobody was to wear black. But the reality is, yes, you just run around because you have to go to register her death and everybody wants, you have to write to all these people, HRMC about the pension and all these different, and the mortgage company and all of that side of it and arrange a funeral and pay for the funeral. And, you know, no sooner have you had the funeral and then they send the bill in and they give you seven days to pay the bill and yeah, it’s just, it’s all about money. Everything to do with death is about money, whether there’s money in the pot for you to have a carer, whether you’ve got money to pay for the funeral, whether you’ve got money to do this and yeah, it all revolves around money I’m afraid. The only people that seem to get rich are the funeral directors [laughs].

So was it a good do, her funeral?

Yes, it was. don’t remember too much about it but everybody that went said it, I did her proud. We did a church service, just one hymn, just the Lord is my Shepherd and the guy that took it, we know. He’s not a friend but he’s an acquaintance. He also my, married my daughter and our son-in-law last September, so it was quite and he did mention that in the service. And yeah, we had Dancing Queen to going in and then we did a civil service at the crematorium. So she had two and then she was cremated. In fact, her ashes are still there in a box. I haven’t, yeah.

Have you thought about what you’re going to do with them?

Yes, my mum wants, when my dad died my mum bought a grave from the council at our local cemetery, which is now full up. they’re now building a new one but we’ve got one of the last plots. So we’ve got the grave there with the headstone and everything and my dad’s ashes are in there. She wants to go in there with my dad. But I’m really cross again, with the council because they won’t let me dig the hole in the grave to put the box of ashes in. They have to dig the hole and they charge me three hundred pounds plus VAT to dig a hole. So everybody is on the take as far as I’m concerned.

The money that people want to do things and I just said to the guy, Look. I’ve been on a manual lifting course. I’ve got hard hats. Steel toe capped boots and a high vis. I’m quite happy to dig a hole to put my mum’s ashes in He said, I understand what you’re saying but I can’t do that because everybody would start doing it So, for the moment, Mum can stay here for, she can stay here in the warm.