LIFE'S EPILOGUE

Until you have to deal with it yourself, you'll never believe how simply exhausting the process of dying can be...

Setting aside those long, dark nights where you lie awake thinking of all of the things that you're going to have to do, which immediately follow all of those other long, dark nights when you were worrying about what was going to happen, you then find yourself running around making telephone calls and booking appointments and dealing with very understanding and sympathetic administrators as you have to collect this certificate so you can make that appointment with the Registrar so that you can finally give that paperwork to the Undertaker and make another appointment with the Solicitor whilst trying to arrange a meeting with the Minister to talk about the actual Service of Thanksgiving which may (or may not) immediately follow the interment and fielding calls from the carers and arranging for the emergency call equipment to be collected and what are we going to do about all of the other equipment and do we need to contact an Estate Agent...?

And that's just day one, and you still haven't had a moment to make all those personal calls to friends that you know that you really should be doing. then there's that constant, terrible feeling that you might have done something "wrongly" or forgotten about something vitally important altogether...

Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, you suddenly think about Electricity companies, and Water Boards, and Pension Providers, and Her Majesty's Government, all of whom also need to be notified, and everyone seems to be talking about "additional expenses" at a time when you're still trying to get around to freezing the one bank account that actually has any "spare" cash in it.

Mum always prided herself upon being organised and spent years telling us that we'd only have to "make one phone call" which was, of course, essentially true, but the snowball effect of that one phone call, coupled with the fact that my "social calendar" for the following week rapidly filled up with various meetings and appointments, basically chewed up the rest of that week.

And in the middle of all this activity and practicality and just "carrying on", all of which I begin to suspect were devised by some devious administrative master-planner to help you get through the whole dreadful business, where is the time for quiet reflection and grieving for your loss...? For just taking a moment and remembering why it is that you're doing all this and who it is that you're doing it for...?

That, it seems, is what the darkest hours, just before the dawn were designed for. Those times when you're left alone with your own thoughts and remember the person-shaped hole that has so suddenly appeared in your life, those brutal few hours when it all washes over you again and you do your very best to keep your upper lip as stiff as possible and try not to get simply overwhelmed by everything.

Like I said...

Exhausting.