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.

Just like the day before, yesterday was the second day of what might be termed a ‘normal’ weekend, as I get used to new patterns and rhythms of life. I spent a certain amount of time when I got up just after 6.00am to see if I could stitch in the funeral directions into my blogs so that family and friends who will have to travel a distance to attend Meg’s funeral will have clear instructions to feed into their SatNavs such that they can find St. Peter’s Church, Bromsgrove initially and the Holiday Inn for the post-funeral tea fest. This took a little longer than I thought but I then showered and breakfasted and was looking forward to the rest of the day. My breakfast routine has changed slightly as Meg and I used to have some porridge to start off the day and I followed this up with a slice of toast with Bovril on it. But in a desire to cut down on both carbs and salt, I now prepare myself a couple of rice cakes upon the first of which I spread a little olive oil rather than butter and some Bovril whilst on the other I am putting a smear of an almond butter (advertised as ‘no palm oil’) which I espied in Aldi the other day. I also buy a pack of four little avocados of the ‘Ripen at home’ variety and am then having one of these each morning with a little Thousand Island dressing and the contents scraped straight out of the skin with a spoon. No sooner had I finished breakfast when my very good University of Birmingham friend phoned and he invited me to go and meet him on the park bench that he, I and Meg used to occupy in our COVID and immediately post COVID days. This invitation I readily accepted and when we met up, we were trying to think how long ago it was that we used to sit on this bench together and it must have been the better part of eighteen months ago. In the park, I met four acquaintances well known to me because they generally have a dog which they are exercising and to each of them, as I was evidently without Meg, I imparted the sad news. Two of them that I know better and are also ‘friends of friends’ I invited along to the funeral as I am sure that we will have spaces to spare and having recently posted the website with details of the funeral arrangements, I was able to give them the URL so that they would have a reminder of the due days and the venues involved. One of the acquaintances who has a magnificent labradoodle dog had his wife die last February of cancer but in his case, he was mourning the demise of wife/partner No. 2 or No. 3 I cannot remember which. After a very pleasant stay plus coffee from our own flasks in the park, it was threatening to rain so my fried very kindly gave me a lift home which I really appreciated but not before we had bumped into my Irish friends which is always a pleasant surprise. As soon as I had bid adieu to my friend, I jumped into our own car and went down the hill to pick up a copy of the Sunday newspaper and then had to think about getting some lunch. I had already put some ham in the slow cooker first thing this morning, but to complement this I used some of these ‘steam’ bags of vegetables and then made myself a small portion of mashed potato from some ‘Smash’ that I had in stock. I must say that it was a a bit of an effort to prepare myself a ‘proper’ meal rather than just having a snack but I am pretty determined that I should continue to prepare myself one good meal a day so that I do not slide down the slippery slope of not looking myself and my diet responsibly. Naturally, this was eaten in front of the TV but, of course, there was no Meg with whom to share my meal.

After lunch, I decided to text one of the young male Asian carers for whom Meg and I had a particularly soft spot and in the text gave a link to the recently posted website with the funeral details. He had immediately sent this around the entire group of cares in the company (using their sort of ‘Group chat’ facility) and this was marvellous because with one click the carers, have all of the details of dates, times and venues. He told me that he and one of the female carers in his little circle of young carers were talking the other day about coming to visit me but he himself had just experienced his first car crash and his car was off the road until it was repaired. Having seen carers four times a day for a year, their absence is starting to be felt, although I have been very busy in the last week. Then I made a video call to my sister and we shared the latest news. I think she was a little ‘down’ for quite understandable reasons as the house in which she had lived for the last fifty years had just been sold and this must seem like the last of one’s bridges having been burned. After this, there was a little gardening job to be undertaken although it turned out to be not so little. Before I can mow the back lawn, some large trailing brambles had fallen across it. So I went down the garden, snipped off each of these and then spent some time cutting the brambles into shorter little lengths so that they could be easily accommodated in our garden waste wheelie bin. This little job had to be done as I could now proceed with the weekly cutting of the back lawn (a job for tomorrow) until these brambles had been cleared out of the way. I have a little treat lined up for myself as there is a David Attenborough CGI film on ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ which although a repeat, I feel I will really be able to enjoy.

It is now two weeks since Meg died and yesterday was to be something approaching a ‘normal’ Saturday as last weekend I was sitting in beautiful sunshine in a friend’s house in Hampshire helping to celebrate his 80th birthday and chatting with two of my closest friends from my University of Winchester days. As I walked down the hill towards the centre of town, I cannot fail to notice that I am not walking as well as I used to and my back and hips are feeling the strain. What I think has happened over the past months and probably a year or so is that pushing Meg in a wheelchair – first a simple transit model and then a heavier and more sophisticated model – has meant that I have ‘de facto’ had the assistance of the equivalent of a giant wheeling frame. Strange as it may sound, pushing Meg in her wheelchairs has proved easier than just walking on my own. I think that I may have to severely limit the walking that I do until I built up my strength again as today I did allow myself the luxury of a brief saunter along the High street and the journey back seemed quite a struggle for me and I had to stop a few times to have a rest. I suspect that when pushing Meg a bit of adrenaline rush assisted me but now I am having to do things a lot more carefully. Although I am not a natural ‘pill popper’ I may have to resort to some Ibuprofen first thing every morning until my hips and back are in a better place. My son had arranged to be in the house before he journeys down to Watford to see his in-laws but we discussed the type of footwear that I now probably need to give me some extra cushioning when I walk any distance. I did intend to go to Droitwich to visit a shoe shop I know where the manager really looks after his customers but I have bitten the bullet as they say and ordered two types of footwear, one a trainer recommended by my chiropodist the other day and the other recommended by my son today – they will both take the best part of a week to actually arrive. I cooked myself some lunch finishing off some meat-in-gravy left over from a day or o ago but filling enough, with baked potato and some fine beans.

In the afternoon, I started to watch a film of the opera ‘La Traviata’ but given that the whole opera is based around a heroine who is dying (of consumption) from the very opening of the opera, then this was a decidedly bad choice of viewing. Fortunately, I was saved from myself by the fact that YouTube encounters buffering problems where the whole transmission/down load ‘freezes’ but on this occasion I was not too unhappy. It had been intention to do a mowing of the back lawn but the weather turned a bit rainy and I thought that this could be left for another day. I received a text from my Italian friend from down the road but when I tried to contact her, her landline was engaged and her mobile diverted to a callbox so I felt a little thwarted by this. Yesterday evening, I decided to engage in ‘normal’ living by resuming my attendance at the Saturday evening Mass in my local church. I had not attended during the latter stages of Meg’s illness when she could not be left and I think it is probably fifteen months since I last attended. I was not particularly looking forward to this event but I was greeted very warmly and affectionately by several of the congregation, some of whom had already heard about Meg’s passing. The congregation has more than its fair sprinkling of Irish Catholics, including one sprightly gentleman who was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and was only given three months to live but is still with us at least ten months after this prognosis and was still well enough to read some of the lessons. Last December, he took a photo of us in the Waitrose cafe and forwarded it onto me at the time but said that he would do so again. What a remarkable and inspirational man he has proved to be, ready at any time to meet his Maker but not yet called to join him. So I received quite a degree of emotional warmth and support from the congregation, some of whom I am sure will probably attend the funeral (and I hope the funeral tea) to give Meg a good send-off. The phrase which crosses their lips most frequently about Meg is that she was ‘such a lovely lady’ with which sentiment I naturally agree. After I had returned home and had some soup, I decided to phone my niece and I was glad that I did. She informed me that many of my Yorkshire family were arranging their lives so that they could make the long journey and attend the funeral and anticipating that some might have long journeys, this is why the funeral was timed for 12.00pm midday. Upon hearing this news, I busied myself for the rest of the evening preparing a one page website with directions for the funeral including a link to the church (so that they could recognise it) and a link to the Holiday Inn (which also contains a map). I have put the website URL in various places but I repeat it here so that it can be easily found:

https://meg-funeral.kesland.info

There is actually a way that I can that ‘kesland.info’ is actually me and nobody else but I won’t go in to the explanation at this particular point except to say that my birthday date is encoded into it. Some readers of this blog may be able to work it out for themselves. I have started to think about the numbers of people who are likely to attend the funeral and of course estimating this takes some guess work. But the Holiday Inn have been good about this and I know that if the numbers fall short I will still be charged for the contracted number but if I were to exceed this by even quite a significant amount, they would ignore this. I suppose this must be a common problem that they must meet all the time in arranging funeral teas.

Wednesday, 11th June, 2025

Here is a link to the details of Meg’s Funeral Venues:


Venues

The evening before yesterday, I got into contact with my University of Winchester friend whose wife is also very ill so that we could have a discussion of over Meg’s final days and months. We are both of the same mind that Meg had a very peaceful and probably tranquil end to her life being at home and surrounded by family and friends. We both had to speculate how different things might have been were she to have survived another year and her final destination would be a hospital ward or a residential home where, with the best will in the world, she would not have experienced the type of environment that we managed to sustain for her here at home. So all in all, I am very happy that Meg’s final months, weeks and days passed the way that they did and can only feel a quiet satisfaction, and considerable relief, that I managed to play my part in making Meg comfortable and peaceful, in both body and mind, as I actually achieved. Yesterday morning, I tweaked Meg’s eulogy which is now the sole item (so far) in a little website I have created and I am sure the tweaking will continue until the last moment. I have practiced reading out the piece I have written so that I can get the pauses and the intonations in the right pace – and particular manage to cope with a particularly powerful and emotional last sentence of farewell. I am finding that if I rehearse this often enough, I can do it a tad better each time whilst keeping my emotions under control.

Yesterday turned out to be a busy, busy day. I walked down into town and having picked up my newspaper treated myself to the ‘free’ coffee Waitrose makes available to card holders who bring their own mug. Whilst drinking my coffee I was approached by a lady with whom I chatted occasionally when Meg and I went down and sat at the ‘Chatty’ table in the Methodist Centre which is just off the Bromsgrove High Street. In the days when I could get Meg in the car, we used to go to this centre on a Wednesday morning and always found the company welcoming, friendly and ecumenical. But it was too far to push Meg when we had to rely upon a longish walk, pushing Meg in the wheelchair. Seeing I was alone, this acquaintance discerned what had happened and reminded me that was still a very friendly crowd were I to reestablish going to the centre on a regular basis each Wednesday. I may well do this but it is also the day when our domestic help calls around and we have a lot of practical things to discuss with each other and to do. On my way back up the hill, I also knocked on the door of th lady who is a supervisor in our local Asda and with whom I made common cause when we were attempting (unsuccessfully) to fight across local developments that were impinging upon both of our properties. She is in the business of downsizing but indicated a willingness to help with anything that she could in view of Meg’s passing and I may seek her assistance on a catering matter in a few days time.

After I had regaled myself with some coffee, I went across to the Holiday Inn which is only 300m away from the end of our road as I had an appointment with them at 11.30. Actually almost everything of any significance had already been decided but we managed to nail down one or two things. The most important is that they are quite happy for me to bring in my own Cava to provide a toast for Meg as they could only supply Prosecco. I was quite happy to pay what is termed ‘corkage’. Corkage is a fee charged by a restaurant or venue for allowing customers to bring their own alcohol (typically wine, but can include other beverages) to consume on the premises instead of purchasing it from their bar. Now my neighbour who is the supervisor at Asda said that if I could find what I wanted in Asda and bought a fair quantity (some 9-10 bottles) she would pretend it was for herself and have a staff discount applied to it, so I shall almost certainly take her up on her kind offer.

When Meg was alive, we used to visit a special club held in a nearby village where we would meet with fellow dementia sufferers and their carers. There, we met a couple who were fellow parishioners of our church and they had a very interesting daughter who had spent a lot of her life in Mexico married to a Mexican husband. As our son spent a pre-university year in Mexico, then the two families had joint experiences to share. The father of the family had fallen and broken his hip and the upshot after what seemed to be a series of medical misadventures was that he died in circumstances not at all described as peaceful. So over a pre-arranged tea, we shared experiences of the passing of our loved ones and the other family seemed to have had as unhappy a time as it was possible to imagine. I described in detail how Meg had died so peacefully with family and friends and even ex-students around her and then felt a little guilty when I heard the account of the death of the father. But they were quite happy to talk about these experiences. not really having the chance to share these them with anyone before. The surviving wife and daughter are coming to the funeral and the daughter who had an interesting career as a dancer and is currently a teacher gave me some useful advice how to cope with the eulogy. I had heard from another source that the eulogy she gave of her father’s life was inspirational and I will certainly follow some of her advice. After they had left, the front lawn beckoned even though the grass was not looking particularly unkempt. So, I gave it a first cut and then sat on the front garden bench to treat myself to a chocolate ice-cream lolly. This is something I would not normally do as I would popped inside to check on Meg but now things are different. My next-door neighbour, a very jolly and supportive Welsh lady, came and sat on the bench beside me and we swapped stories and jokes. I then carried on and got the second, transverse cut done before going indoors and thinking about tea (more ice-cream!) and watching the cricket on the TV.

Yesterday morning I seemed to be a little ahead of myself so I thought I would at least make a start on preparing the words of eulogy which I am to deliver. at an appropriate point, in Meg’s funeral service. The priest has allocated me a time slot of 3-5 minutes so I intend to use absolutely the whole of the 5 minutes allocated to me. With hardly any searching, I managed to find a program on the web which give a timing for the words that you specify with options for a slow, normal or fast reading speed. Utilising this, I ascertained that 650 words should take exactly 5 minutes so I need to ‘cut my coat according to my cloth’ to use an old fashioned expression. These speeches or a mixture of biography on the one hand and a highlighting of the achievements achieved in the life being celebrated and so I started writing knowing that I should need to be economical and concise in what I was to write.

The day is my normal shopping day and I managed to get off in plenty of time as I do not wait until carers have come and gone. I must say that the experience of today was nowhere as painful as a fortnight ago (I missed out shopping last week) but there were still a few ‘pangs’ as I wandered up and down the middle aisle where I used to buy bits and pieces that I thought might be useful for Meg. My son helped me to unpack the shopping after I got home. He also looked at the first draft of the eulogy and suggested useful refinements and one or two corrections of fact. I dare say that it will be tweaked quite a lot before eventual delivery. I will have a text copy and my son can read it out if I get overwhelmed with emotion. I have also received the excellent news that our ex-Erasmus student who managed to get here on time and have a few last words with Meg is also flying over for the funeral. I have asked her if she can prepare a few words of her recollections and appreciation of Meg which she can share with us at tea time before we all have a sip (gulp?) of Cava, the Spanish champagne. In the late morning, I drove myself down to our local Health Centre where I do my Pilates because I had booked a session for myself with a physiotherapist as I fear that my back has had to bear a lot of the strain of caring for Meg over the past year or so, Actually, her assessment was that my back was in fairly good condition but some regions of it need a bit of working on it to restore mobility. She is going to recommend some sessions fo me which might take some time to arrive but in the meanwhile she has agreed to request the doctor to authorise a back X-ray to ascertain that I have no nasties lurking and to help to direct any treatment options. The doctor has already agreed and I should await an appointment some time. After I got home, I cooked myself some decent lunch and started on my afternoon tasks.

About a week ago, I had ordered a duplicate marriage certificate, as required by the Teachers’ Pension Agency. This arrived this morning so I could complete the form, scan it to have a photocopy of it and then include with the application form a copy of the death certificate and the duplicate marriage certificate. This was then sent off using the ‘Signed For’ service from the Post Office and I set about my second task of the afternoon, which was to dispose of a specialised little plastic container of ‘sharps’ (used syringes deployed by the District Nurses to give sone final injections to Meg) The first two chemists I tried refused to accept the container, one even telling me I should go the hospital to dispose of it but eventually I was steered towards another GP practice (not my own) which shares the same building where after a fairly lengthy wait in the queue as their computer system was down eventually the container was accepted with, I felt, a degree of reluctance. But I was anxious to finally dispose of it as it was the very last item of medical equipment that remained as un unpleasant reminder of the way in which our half of our lounge was converted into a bedroom. But our domestic job has done a magnificent job in re-arranging the pieces furniture to their former locations and the whole room now looks and feels so much more orderly (as some clutter has been removed) and I will continue with my efforts to bring the rest of the room into good order as well. But I did find time to write a special text of thanks to our domestic help ho had done such a good job in restoring our living room to rights it, one half of it having been a downstairs bedroom for the past year. There are times in your life and this is one of them when needs a trusted friend to help you sort things out and, of course, later on we will Meg’s clothes to sort through and eventually to throw it. But I am determined not to push this too far into the future because it is not a job to be delayed for too long so that we can all move on, as they say.

Being life-long cricket fans, Meg and I used to enjoy the highlights of the current Test Match which was often broadcast under the title of ‘Today at the Test’ generally from 7-8 in the evening. Now this time just about coincided with the time that Meg’s care workers arrived to pout her to bed so I have not sat down and watched this for well over a year. Yesterday, though, I watched England play Zimbabwe whose team is not in the top flight of cricketing nations and the Zimbabweans were put to the sword with England finishing the day at 498 for 3 at the end of the first day. The whole transmission was a succession of boundaries as three English batsman scored centuries. Later in the evening I had a good chat with my University of Winchester friend on whom I can always rely to cheer me up if I feeling a little morose. I have actually not watched much news or TV in the last week or so as other things have occupied my attention.

A night or so ago, I received a surprise phone call from our chiropodist who wished to make the following request. A near neighbour was in contact with an old lady whose husband had died and she was in receipt of all kinds of medicines and dressings and did not know how to dispose of them. I gave the chiropodist my telephone number and the lady then contacted me so that I cold tell her about the way in which I disposed of all our excess medical supplies to aid the Ukraine. I passed on the email contact that I had and I trust that my chiropodist’s neighbour will manage to make contact with the Ukrainian lady so that even more unwanted medicines can flow to a place where they are needed and appreciated. I have told quite a few people now how we managed to dispose of these medications and how happy it made me feel (and probably Meg as well if she can observe from a better place). Yesterday morning, my son and I had allocated ourselves the time and space to utilise the government ‘Tell Us Once’ service whereby all government departments with which an individual mainly has had transactions are informed about their death. A special reference number was given to us by the Registrar when Meg’s death was registered and this is the key that starts to unlock the process. In practice my son and I found the site to be well designed and easy to navigate but we did appreciate that ‘two eyes are better than one’ when it comes to supplying critical credentials. Meg did not have a driving licence but the two key numbers were her National Insurance number and her Passport number. The whole process was completed in about 20 minutes and we were pleased that that this went without a hitch. I walked down to town to collect my newspaper and the staff at Waitrose let me have a bottle of cordial for free as well as giving me a lemon drizzle cake for my elevenses and yet another bunch of flowers. The staff at Waitrose have been overwhelmingly kind and sympathetic to me and I am so appreciative of all of them. Last week when our domestic help was here, she and my son did a sterling job in clearing out all of the impedimenta associated with a bedroom downstairs and so the task this week was to give the carpet a through hoovering and to restore the furniture to the position that it used to occupy so that we now have now reclaimed all of our Main lounge. It is true that a coffee table-top of clutter has been left for me to process but this will be a labour of love and I will set to it with a vengeance.

When we held our 50th wedding anniversary celebrations, these were split into three so that my family in Yorkshire could attend one, family and friends in the Midlands attend the second and finally our Spanish friends and some cousins and friends to attend the third held in Spain. I have a videoclip of Meg making an off-the-cuff speech to our family in Yorkshire in September, 2017 and most of the clip is Meg speaking although I did join in with some observations about how proud I was of Meg (as well as some jokes) towards the end. When I was up during the night, I constructed a short and memorable link to the website where this videoclip is located and thus I was able to show it to our domestic help whilst she was having her mid-morning coffee. This, of course, was Meg at her absolute best speaking without notes and without hesitations and with a clear memory before the cruel manifestations of the dementia were to appear a year or so later. I wanted our domestic help to have a wonderful memory of Meg at her most fluent and most typical and we were both so very pleased that we could enjoy this videoclip together. There ere various little games and pastimes I had bought for Meg which I hoped (in vain) that she could enjoy but our domestic help was pleased that she could utilise them on the residential home in which she worked. After our domestic help and son had departed, I did not feel particularly hungry so wondered if I could squeeze in a visit to the Bank in order to close down Meg’s account. This flying visit proved fruitless as I needed to see some personnel who were at lunch and it would, in any case, take some time. So I returned home and awaited the arrival of our hairdresser who, of course, only has me to process. Her own brother had died a few months ago and she is busy disposing of unwanted effects and trying to sell his flat so we empathised with each other that we were both fully cognisant of what we were going through with the processes that take place after a bereavement.

When I eventually got to our bank for the second time that day, the person who saw me could not have been more sympathetic or kindly. For a start she had two close kin who had dementia and her own husband had died, very quickly, of throat cancer. The bank official had managed to locate a really old savings account which was almost 30 years old and which we had totally forgotten about with £28 in it. This was ‘rescued’ and then the other trivial amount of money in Meg’s main account will make its way over eventually into our joint account whilst Meg’s individual account will be closed down. I had a briefcase full of documentation but all that was necessary was a death certificate (which was photocopied and then handed back to me) and my own ID (driving licence, passport) The procedures seemed quite thorough and meticulous with lots of checking along the way and I was in the bank for an 1hr and 20 minutes. But as I walked back to the car, I realised that Meg, in the eyes of the state, does not officially ‘exist’ anymore as this morning’s and this afternoon’s procedures will have closed down all of Meg’s financial dealings with the state (and the bank) On the way home, I spotted my Irish friend doing some gardening so I gave him a quick update on all of our news to date.

Yesterday was quite a full day and we seemed to get quite a lot done. Our first priority was to get to our solicitors in Kidderminster in order to pick up a copy of Meg’s will which went without a hitch. My son and I had to take along ID but our driving licenses sufficed for this purpose and although we had taken along a copy of the death certificate, the solicitors were quite happy just to take a photocopy of this which meant that we preserved one of the several copies we had purchased yesterday. We also received the good news from the solicitor that we did not need to apply for probate so we can now get cracking on us the ‘Tell Us Once’ service tomorrow morning. We treated ourselves to a coffee in Marks and Spencer and then got home and I prepared myself for my next meeting which was with the Eucharistic Minister from church and the Parish priest. This meeting, too, ran smoothly although the Eucharistic minister and I were not quite sure how things were going to be. I now know the time allocation for the Eulogy for Meg which I am to prepare and the priest has allowed me a maximum of 5 minutes. Actually, he said between 3-5 minutes but I can use the facilities of Windows 11 to read out the text I will prepare and this will help to get the timings correct. My intention is to have a fully prepared script and if, on the day, I am rather too over-whelmed with emotion, then my son can always read it out on my behalf. But we had done a lot of preparation beforehand so this made life easier for ourselves. Then at home my son prepared some home-made soup for both of us and then very kindly ran me down in his car to the Pilates class. This was just an enjoyable an experience as it proved to be last week and to provide a rather special little end to the morning , one of the class had brought along a little bottle of blackberry vodka which she had prepared and distributed to the class last Christmastime, probably knowing that I would not be able to distribute my bottles of damson gin which I have been in the habit of doing over the years.

After the obligatory large cup of tea (after all, what else to do in the days after a loved one has died, as I remember when my grandmother died in 1960), I had another pleasant surprise. The Eucharistic minister and her husband called around in order to collect the rather superior camp bed which they had let me have on loan for practically the whole of a year. I have slept alongside Meg during the past year and we lowered the hospital bed so that it was the same height as the camp bed. If Meg were to experience any distress in the middle of the night, then I would be able to proffer an arm to comfort her. Fortunately, the number of occasions upon which proved to be necessary were very few but had I been upstairs in our normal bed, then I would not have known if Meg needed any assistance in the middle of the night. So it was excellent to return the camp bed to its rightful owners and this is the last piece of furniture that needs to be removed before our domestic help and I can actually turn our living room back to its former state. I also received an email from the hotel across the road asking me to supply some details and choose some options for the afternoon tea they will provide on the day of the funeral. This too proved very simple and straight forward to do and we are catering for about 50 people to attend, all in all. My final task in the afternoon was to circulate details of Meg’s passing to some of the ‘Old Fogies’ dining club in Winchester who did not appear in the ‘Contacts’ section of my phone and would therefore not have known about Meg’s death. I have already received one sympathetic response from a very old friend who had severe health issues of his own a few years back and remembers well some of the conversations that he had with Meg about her tennis playing days and how one was encouraged, (wrongly) in the 1960;s to ‘play through the pain’

In domestic politics, we are now seeing quite a dramatic shift in the tone of the Labour party leadership over the current situation in Gaza. The policy of only allowing the merest trickle of food into the Gaza strip and a program that seems to seek to remove much of the Palestinian population has caused the patience of some of the traditional allies of Israel to snap. Keir Starmer is evidently coordinating statements from both France and Canada condemning the present Israeli government and calling for an immediate cease fire. The dread word ‘genocide’ has not yet passed the lips of the present Labour party leadership but the back benchers have not shown any such restraint in using the word. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the Netanyahu government in Israel needs the support of one or two really extremist right wing parties which are needed for the Israeli government coalition to survive. The UK government has suspended negotiations for a trade deal with Israel and also ‘sent for’ the Israeli ambassador to convey the strong disapproval of current Israeli policy. Apart from international affairs, there are very strong rumours that the ‘Winter Fuel Allowance’ payments should continue. Two options are being entertained and which view will prevail it is too early to say. One option would be to ‘tweak’ the benefits by raising the ceiling so that more people will be able to keep their fuel allowance but the political benefit from this might be minimal. Another option would be to restore the status quo and keep a universal benefit but this would be expensive and it would involve a massive ‘U’ turn. In addition, if this were to happen then the government would undoubtedly ‘lose face’ and be forced into an admission that they had got it wrong in the first place.

When we first moved into our present house some 17½ years ago now we could not fail to notice a modern hotel situated some 200-300 metres away from us on the other side of the main Kidderminster Road. This was then known as the Bromsgrove Hotel but older residents of Bromsgrove knew it by its previous name which was the Pine Lodge Hotel. It was built in the style of a Spanish hacienda and we enjoyed many good Sunday lunches all of those years ago. It had facilities such as a small swimming pool and my daughter-in-law with whom we shared our house at that time negotiated a special family-rate membership of the sports facilities there, of which we availed ourselves only once or twice. I think it is fair to say that the fortunes and the reputation of the hotel have waxed and waned over the years and within a few years of our acquaintance with it, it was taken over and became the Holiday Inn. Approximately seven years ago, my sister-in-law and niece stayed there when they came to visit me after I had been in hospital and their stay was comfortable enough. To bring us up-to-date, our long established ex-Erasmus student who has become a life-long friend stayed there when she caught a flight from Madrid and managed to see Meg an hour and a half before she died, which was excellent I feel for both of them. The day after Meg’s death, I attended a pre-arranged birthday tea party there and the level of service proved to be excellent and we even took away six ‘doggy bags’ of left-overs. hen I was having a brief chat with my very friendly neighbours, they suggested that we hold our post-funeral refreshments, otherwise known as a ‘wake’ in that hotel as they themselves had recently attended a funeral party there and they thought it was excellent. Hence my son and I immediately walked over the road and saw their Events organiser and were delighted to be able to book our slot for Wednesday June 11th and were even shown the room which was to be made available to us. I am not sure why this did not occur to me immediately – a case of ‘familiarity breeds contempt’? But the advantages are legion as it is so easy to find being on the main Kidderminster Road, there is ample car parking and some of my ex-colleagues who are attending the funeral are already booked in for the night. There are all kinds of details yet to be worked out, but we know that these funeral events they have organised many times in the past and therefore will put on ‘a good show’ for us. The slightly romantic or nostalgic part of me is repeating to me that Meg would have loved these final celebrations of her life in quasi-Spanish style surroundings given the style in which the hotel is built and of course its proximity to our house means we can easily walk home and/or invite people in to spend time with us. We are awaiting further contact to be made with us so that we can give numbers and supply further details but this is another part of the jigsaw that is falling into place.

After my son and I had formally registered Meg’s death and picked up our copies of the relevant certificates, we popped into the adjacent building which now houses our GP practice and I tried to make an appointment to see the most senior partner in the practice for whom I have a great deal of respect. I particularly wanted to see this particular doctor because it was he whom we consulted at the very start of Meg’s final illness some 6-7 years ago now. In addition, he attended me when I was discharged from hospital and very skilfully dressed my post-operation wounds when I was too ill to attend the surgery. In addition, I used to help out with the training of young medical students from the University of Birmingham to whom they wanted to expose a ‘real’ but to some extent model patient so that they could develop some skills in dealing with patients as part of their medical training. But this particular doctor seemed to be mysteriously unavailable with nobody on the reception desk quite knowing what his movements were or how we could make an appointment. This seemed very strange to me so I had to settle for the doctor who had discussed the details to be entered on Meg’s death certificate with me but she was on holiday for at least a fortnight so this too will have to wait until she returns. There are just some details about Meg’s final illness which I need to clear up to my own satisfaction as there are some things in Meg’s medical records the full significance of which I was unaware. However, I have to reflect that Meg’s quality of life was pretty high in her last year or so of life and I am pretty convinced a lot superior to conditions experienced by other dementia patients when nearing the ends of their lives. In particular, Meg experienced completely what is often termed a ‘good’ death, surrounded by family, friends and even ex-students. Upon reflection, what I rather tremendously dubbed as our ‘Music Lounge’ meant that Meg could enjoy some magnificent music via the excellent concerts provided as result of our YouTube subscription and we tended to play some Mozart, and latterly Fauré practically every day. Also, we did manage to locate some classic Joan Baez concerts and Meg certainly derived a lot of pleasure from listening to these which reminded us both not only of our student days but also of the Joan Baez farewell concert which we attended in Birmingham a few years ago now. Incidentally, we showed some of these Joan Baez recordings to some of the young carers who had never heard anything like it in their lives before. In Meg’s final months, she received some excellent care and was always handled with tenderness and respect. The 4-5 young carers developed a deep affection for Meg, (and she for them I am pretty convinced), and they certainly enhanced her end of life experience. When Meg was being made comfortable in her specialist chair, the young carers used to put around her a blanket in my possession which was a deep blue on one side and a white faux fur on the other side. It looked for all of the world as though it was a robe that had been requisitioned from the House of Lords itself and so after they had put it carefully around Meg they used to call her ‘Queen Meg’ which she enjoyed tremendously. So taking a long view, I am constantly being told that no husband could have cared for Meg more that I actually did and, thank goodness, I have managed to achieve before my own health gave out. Otherwise, to quote the great political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, then Meg’s life would have been ‘poor, nasty brutish and short’ but instead I think it was the complete reverse of this and I am so happy that she did enjoy the end of life in some peace and comfort and not an anonymous hospital bed/ward which we managed to avoid.

Yesterday, after I returned home from my Hampshire trip, I naturally unloaded the car and was delighted to discover the black tray-style purse which I had mislaid for at least a month now was now found. This was a classic case of how things get lost/mislaid as it is made of a shiny black leather and had slid completely and fitted snugly in between the (black) upholstery of the car and the (black) fabric of the front seat. Aware of the fact that ‘black on black’ is a fatal combination, particularly in the case of cars, I always tend to buy new phones that are a vivid and non-black colour to ensure that this not reoccur as I have been fooled before. Upon retrieving the purse, I decorated it with a few coloured ‘dot’ style stickers to make sure it does not go wandering again. It did not contain any house keys but did contain one or two small keys which I could deploy to lock a rather fine leather briefcase which I keep in the study to house things like recent medical records and hospital appointments. After I had made myself a cup of tea, I thought I would rummage through the contents of another briefcase which I knew contained some medical and other files pertaining to Meg to see if I could remind myself of the exact day upon which had retired and when she had first to leave work because of her back problems. I did discover something that I really did not wish to know. In the briefcase was a medical file which detailed some blood pressure readings sone of which were taken at least eight years ago and one set that dated back eleven years. Apart from one or two solitary prescriptions, this seems to have gone largely untreated because at the time Meg was suffering from other apparently urgent problems such as her recurrent back pains and quite frequent and crippling migraines. I did then go on the web and discovered some research papers that indicated that untreated hypertension in late middle age (Meg would have been in her late 60’s) could be the precursor to dementia but, if caught and treated in time, could delay the onset or the severity of symptoms in anything from 30%–50% of cases. This troubled me greatly and I had to think through all of the implications of what I had just discovered. I did go next door to inform the neighbours that I had returned from Hampshire and they, very kindly, regaled me with a glass of sherry and made some very helpful suggestions as to where we might hold the wake that will take place after Meg’s funeral in just over three week’s time. I think it is fair to say that after I had read in Meg’s medical files, I was rather a sombre and reflective mood for much of the evening.

My son was due to call around today and we have been quite busy with a round of engagements that we need to fulfil today. However, the Hampshire trip has shown me how cluttered a house can become and, returning home to my own domain everything seems to me a model of neatness and good order, which of course I intend to continue. Yesterday morning I did arise at 6.30 am then sat in my friend’s lounge until he appeared some time after 9.00am. I entertained myself by ‘liberating’ a book summarising great philosophers and their systems of thought but after two and a half hours of such reading, I was contemplating writing a note to my friend and then leaving the house without saying goodbye. Fortunately he appeared and we had a long and leisurely breakfast and I left at about 11.30 and the threatened road works/closures on the A34 did not manifest themselves so I had an easy a journey back as the journey the day before was fraught.

Later on in the morning, my son and I walked over the fairly adjacent ‘Holiday Inn’ to enquire about its availability for post-funeral refreshments and eventually we saw the Events organiser. The really good news is that they are available for an event on Wednesday, 11th June so we have booked our slot and seen the room in which our refreshments will take place and we think it will be excellent for us. This particular inn is built in the style of a Spanish Hacienda in any case and we used to eat there quite regularly when we moved to our present house nearly eighteen years ago now. In the late morning, my son had a formal ‘slot’ booked with the undertaker. The lady who dealt with us was sympathetic and practical and I thought she handled things beautifully. My son and I had the slightly strange experience of choosing not only a favourite dress which Meg is to wear but also some underwear as well. To my mind, this is a little strange as after the funeral service in the church, Meg’s body is to be cremated so she will not be wearing the clothes for very long. Also I want to remember Meg as she was and not as she is now so I certainly do not wish to see her dead body in which bad memories might drive out good ones. But I am very inexperienced in such things as I have never had the occasion to make the practical arrangements of a deceased wife – one every 57 1/2 years is quite enough. My son and I did all of the formal registration of a death in the early afternoon so we are relieved to be at this stage in the process. Later, I telephoned a very good ex-University of Winchester friend who I actually saw the other day and will see again in about three weeks time and as she is so much more experienced in these matters than I, she was a great source of sensible and practical advice. Then I popped around to see my next-door neighbour to thank him for the suggestion of the ‘Holiday Inn’ for our post-funeral refreshments. We are delighted that we followed his suggestion of a choice of venue and I am sure that we are doing the right thing at the end of the day.