Yesterday was my Pilates day but there were some important tasks hat I wanted to fulfil this morning. One was a telephone call to the Teachers’ Pensions Agency and all I needed to ask them was whether the application form to receive a portion of Meg’s Teachers Pension had been received. I had needed to submit this about ten days ago and included with the application form itself was a death certificate and also a marriage certificate. Even though the query was a simple one I needed to supply about half a dozen bits of information about myself and and another half a dozen bout Meg before I could even put a simple query to them. It seems that the system they have is that documents arrive in the post room and are then opened and the contents scanned before the documents are returned to you. This process takes 5-10 working days but the TPA have already had the documents for about eight working days and I do not know how much longer it will take for a simple acknowledgement to arrive but I quoted the Post Office Tracking number to them supplied as part of of the ‘To be signed for’. process. At the end of the day, I think they have received my completed application form but it was not very clear and the official to whom I was speaking had to rely upon other telephone calls and, even so, she could give no indication how long the applications takes to process. The whole point here is that Meg’s pension payments were stopped immediately but it might take weeks (without an income) for the new arrangements to come into effect. I thought it would be a rather messy and inconclusive telephone call and so it proved to be. Then I popped over the road to the ‘Holiday Inn‘ and paid the invoice for Meg’s funeral tea to be held in just over a week’s time – they required payment in full perhaps because of the short notice. Upon returning home, I received two telephone calls, one of them being from one of Meg’s surviving cousins who are going to be brought to the funeral by yet other cousins. A second telephone call was from the doctor who had signed Meg’s death certificate with whom I needed to get onto contact to clear up one or details about Meg’s medical history. She was able to answer some questions about Meg’s history of hypertension that had been troubling me but that line of enquiry has now come to an end, When I reflect upon the waves of different ailments that Meg experienced, I have concluded in my own mind that her pretty aged parents did not pass on a particularly good set of genes by way of inheritance. I rather shocked myself by making a list of the serious health problems which Meg encountered in the second half of her life as well as several operations- as soon as one problem seemed to abate or burn itself out, it was replaced by another in quick succession. Even as she died, she was afflicted by up to eight conditions which she generally bore without much complaint. But in an earlier life, she had been fit enough to get to the top of some of the UK’s highest mountains such as Skiddaw and Helvellyn in the Lake District and Snowdon in Wales. We used to visit the Lakes each Easter and, together with our son, regularly got snowed off a whilst attempting one peak or another.
Finally, I received a very welcome note and little card from an ex De Montfort University colleague – we were both completing our PhD’s together by written papers and were very helpful to each other, as I recall, as we wrote some joint papers. He had heard about Meg’s demise by reading my blog which was fortuitous because he may have retired from the University and I was going to let him receive the news by ordinary mail. He and his wife were to be on holiday on the day of the funeral but he is scheduled to visit St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna where he said that he would light a candle for Meg. I replied that I am sure it would give Meg a great deal of pleasure that a candle was to be lit for her in such a famous cathedral. I must confess that when I have been on holiday in Spain and visited a cathedral (which was quite a common occurrence) I would light candles for recently departed friends and relatives. But one always wanted to light a ‘genuine’ candle and not just insert a coin to have a little row of electronic candles automatically illuminate which is the practice in some churches eager to avoid a fire hazard. When I think about it, the lighting of a candle must almost be a universal across most of the major world religions (but excluding Islam)
Last night, I started to watch the women’s football (England vs Spain) and England had taken the lead with an opportunistic goal against the run of play in the first half. But then I went off to consult some emails and when I resumed watching the match, Spain hd scored two quick goals and, probably deservedly, won the match. I have received back the first proofs of the Order of Service but already there are some slight changes to be made and I need to consult wit my son over the choice of photos because there is one I am not sure about and I think some of the others need to be re-positioned. But all in all, it is quite a good first draft and should be quite easy to ‘tweak’ I have also received an estimate of the total cost of the funeral so now I just want to get it all over and done with. Looking at masses of photographs of Meg whilst I am fine tuning the rolling display does not help me to move on but in just over week now, I should start to enter what I might call my ‘post-Meg’ life (into which I have been thinking myself for some time now)