Fiona's Quiet Life

That was the best funeral i have ever been to.

Because Gor­don had to be back in Den­mark by today there was no time for agon­ising about things, but there are so many wee details that need to be seen to.

It was not somber it was a cel­eb­ra­tion of a life fully lived, there was no Min­is­ter as hers had retired and the other ones didn’t know any­thing about her, so we had her favour­ite hymns played..I vow to thee my coun­try and for those in peril on the sea.…and she was car­ried in to amaz­ing grace and dis­ap­peared to Flower of Scot­land.. it was like a con­jur­ing trick , i was look­ing at the word sheet hast­ily prin­ted out by us the night before and when i looked up for the last couple of lines she was gone.….My brother thanked people for com­ing and then her young­est grand­daugh­ter spoke about her, them my older daugh­ter spoke about all the things she had fit­ted in to her long life from run­ning away to Lon­don aged 16 to be a bal­let dan­cer, hotly pur­sued by her irate father, to her being one of the first blue­bell girls etc etc. my brother’s first wife spoke about her ‘in memory of a feisty woman’ it all fit­ted per­fectly in the time allot­ted, then we all came back here and had a party.

Gor­don is back in Den­mark and i have col­lec­ted the ashes. we will scat­ter them near Glen Coe next time he is over here.

I have gone from being respons­ible for two ail­ing frail people to glor­i­ous free­dom from worry in 4 months, it is all very strange.

No Comments »

What is it with com­puter print­ers , they work fine when you don’t really need them to and you are just play­ing, but try to do some­thing use­ful ‚like print out what is going to be sung and said at a funeral and it refuses to work prop­erly, it sends you out to a super­mar­ket for more ink, it still refuses to print, then…etc etc.

i am in a state of melt­down, Gor­don is calm .

but actu­ally it is all under control.…i think.

going to col­lect Abi­gail from air­port now.

No Comments »

???? Life, or in fact death is so com­plic­ated, maybe it is just because?I am work­ing with a head full of marsh­mal­low and get­ting close to melt­down but everything seems so unne­ces­sar­ily dif­fi­cult today. start­ing with all traffic light turn­ing to red if?I get any­where near them.

???? First in order to bury/cremate someone you need to register the death, in order to register the death you need a death cer­ti­fic­ate, the doc­tor had delivered the cer­ti­fic­ate to some­where miles away that i couldn’t find, even it’s nearest police sta­tion didn’t know where it was. he could have kept it in his sur­gery and made life much easier for me. so hav­ing wasted ages doing that i man­age to get a time fixed for the funeral by phone so then i can put the notice in the news­pa­per in case i have missed any­body that would want to come. but the newspaper’s com­puters are down.

so we have lunch.

?? then we go up to the regis­trars and register the death , that was made nice and easy by a very nice regis­trar at East­wood registry office ‚Mar­isa had given me her birth cert. and mar­riage cert, which made?even more?easy as all the info about occu­pa­tions? was there.. hav­ing got the requis­ite bits of paper we head off for the under­takers .…..who were not quite where they said they were.….……but they were closed already by 4;40 p.m. grrrr. so i have to get the papers to them by 11 a.m. tomor­row or there will be no funeral.

???? The news­pa­per said the notice had to be in by 4;30 but as their com­puters had been down she let me off with doing it late. so it should be in tomorrow.

???? I did man­age to put one in her local paper no trouble.and they want me to do an obit as she was a well known local character.

???? Gor­don has spent all day and half of last night try­ing to get flights for Mari­anne to get across from Den­mark and flights for them to get back by Fri­day. she arrives at 07:15 am tomorrow.

mean­while i keep remem­ber­ing people i should be phoning.

so funeral is set for Wed­nes­day morn­ing, tomor­row i shall get loads of food from M&S for the wake.

now i need a cup of tea

No Comments »

well, this is becom­ing a habit.

my mother died at 7:15 this morning.…..even though she was 94 and ‘quiet’ for a few days, it was a shock.

Gor­don is here and fam­ily is ral­ly­ing round ‚i have been dust­ing. typ­ical dis­place­ment activ­ity i am told.especially as i rarely do any house­work .

it being Sat­urday we can do noth­ing till Monday.fortunately Mar­isa keeper of the fam­ily archives has cop­ies of her birth cer­ti­fic­ate which makes regis­ter­ing her death a bit more easy, i was going mad try­ing to find bits of paper again.

feel­ing a bit battered.

No Comments »

Sur­vived Chip­pen­ham and small sticky boys and vis­its to but­ter­fly king­doms etc, weather freez­ing and wet which messed up my care­ful pack­ing of three bags full.

now in Lon­don and have been to see Wicked at the west end it was not very good but Jonathan liked it so as it was his birth­day treat it was a good night, then we dis­covered Judith had lost the house keys so we had to break in to the house ‚send­ing Ian up a lad­der to force an upper window.

Judith is sup­pose to be revis­ing her Span­ish for her exams so i must do some gram­d­moth­erly growl­ing at her.

No Comments »