Yesterday the day dawned with a brilliant blue sky and sunshine which is unusual because it was a Bank Holiday and one expects the weather to be bad for UK Bank Holidays. The night before, I had gone through many of the contacts in my mobile phone and posted them a simple message containing the link to the website containing the details of Meg’s funeral arrangements. I am really pleased that I took the effort of posting this one page website because in all of the messages, it only takes one click and the all of the details of the church and the post-funeral afternoon tea in the Holiday Inn are revealed and what could be simpler? I must confess that my heart sinks somewhat when I know that a Bank Holiday is in the offing because many of one’s normal routines are disrupted. But the week ahead is going to seem relatively empty as most of the administrative tasks associated with a death have already been undertaken. I am trying to make a best guesstimate of how many will turn up at the church and later the hotel so that we know how many to cater for but I am working on a figure of about 50 at the moment. I need to assemble some photographs and also make sure that I have the relevant music tracks stored on USB memory sticks but this is probably going to be an ‘evening’ type job as I will ensure that I get out and have plenty of fresh air whilst we have a bit of summer to enjoy. A little thing that happened which actually gives me quite a lot of comfort is that when our friends called round who were fellow parishioners and had actually just lost the father to dementia, the daughter of the family who had spent a lot of her life in Mexico was shown the lounge where Meg had slept in the last year of her life. This room is now completely restored back to it status as a lounge but without some clutter that had built up during the years and the daughter remarked ‘What a wonderful peaceful atmosphere there is in this room!’ She reckoned that since her Mexico days she was incredibly sensitive (as are the Mexicans) to the emotional atmosphere within a house and home and whilst there may be nothing in this, there are some people (including many of the young carers for Meg) who would say that they were very much aware of, and sensitive to, the ‘aura’ within a house or room. I did spent a certain amount of time going through some of the email contacts that were not in my mobile phone contacts giving them details of Meg’s funeral just in case, despite the large travel distances involved, anyone else would want to come to the funeral. It is horrible to know about these things after the event which has happened to me once or twice in life.
Yesterday morning, I started to saunter down the hill to collect my daily newspaper but not going at a great pace. I hand delivered eight notifications of Meg’s funeral (five to near neighbours and a further three to more distant ones). I had wondered whether to take any spare copies of me and, of course Sod’s Law came into play because on the way down the hill I bumped into one of my Pilates class mates walking her dogs and another wheelchair-bound resident of the street who always seems to keep cheerful. A soon as I arrived in Waitrose, I treated myself to a coffee and the very kindly Asian partner who looks after me liberated a packet of 4 yum-yums for me (Meg’s favourite confectionary when the cafe was in operation) for me to drink with my coffee. During the course of the day, I received two further messages each heart warning in the extreme. One was from a couple of our De Montfort University colleagues, now married to each other and living in London. They replied to an email of mine saying that having known Meg for 45 and 50 years respectively of course they would attend the funeral. The female colleague was very kindly to Meg when she was suffering so much with a bad back and visited her at our home on several occasions – and we played a massive practical joke on the other that we shall no doubt remind him about when we meet. The other email was from a near neighbour of ours in Hampshire and was only a young lad then but now is ‘grown up’ and studying at Sandhurst. His email detailing the influence that Meg was so revealing that I have asked his permission (very readily given) to be published on a tribute page which I am compiling for Meg from various people. I have asked the two Spanish ex-Erasmus students to do the same as well as the four young carers who had such a deep bond with Meg so when all of the tributes get put together they will be an inspiring read, I am sure.
When I consulted the TV schedules for the evening, there is going to be a biography and an assessment of Jane Austen starting at 9.0pm followed at 10.00 by one of the classic versions of ‘Pride and Prejudice’. I think that I may go to bed at 9.00 with a thick blanket around me and watch the highly rated biography in bed and so it will matter if I fall asleep. Meanwhile the film of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ can wait for a catch-up on the BBC iPlayer tomorrow afternoon. I find that I have been so busy in the last week that my TV viewing has been somewhat attenuated. I must admit that I have not had much time for any reading over the last year and a half because a lot of my time has, of necessity, been devoted to Meg and I am extremely pleased to have navigated this part of my life successfully. But I do need to continue with my decluttering activities and one job to be done is to take a pile of books from the shelf of a coffee table and put them in a place where they ought to belong. The first book is a ‘Guardian Stylebook’ which is a guide for writers and this is probably worth a detailed browse. The second book that fell into my hand, as it were, was called ‘The Diet Whisperer’ and seems to be a class apart from the ordinary diet style book. The authors are a couple of doctors for a start and the front cover of the book offers the possibility to ‘supercharge your metabolism, reverse diabetes and harmonise your brain clock’ so it is probably worth a serious and detailed study, particularly as it seems at first glance to be so scientifically grounded.