The banality of death

They tell you about death as dire but inevitable, a dread we all must face.

They tell you about death as bereavement and loss, as a pain to suffer and mourn.

They don’t tell you about death as an endless procession of bureaucratic tasks, turning a moment of sorrow into a litany of monotonous administrative chores.

Take arranging a funeral.

Is there going to be a service? If so, who will conduct it? Does the crematorium have a slot available (my mother had asked to be cremated) at the same time as the celebrant (he was about to go on leave)?

What style of coffin did we want (given that it was going to be burned…)? What colour of flowers? How should the press announcement be worded? How about the Order of Service booklet – which should contain what photos, to represent 94 years of life in just five images?

Then there’s the will. The lawyer was kind enough to phone me.

‘You need to contact your mother’s bank.’

‘Done.’

‘You need to contact the Department of Work and Pensions.’

‘Done.’

‘You need to make arrangements for the cremation.’

‘Done.’

Have you noticed how helpful lawyers are? How they’re happy to provide all the advice you could possibly need and more? At £280 an hour, wouldn’t you be?

But the worst bit is clearing the flat. My mother was living in sheltered accommodation, in what was in effect just a bed-sitter with its own kitchen and bathroom. But it never ceases to amaze me just how much someone can cram into a small space if they really set their mind to it.

Trolley load after trolley load of books went down to the charity shop. Great piles of clothes. Bits of bric-a-brac. And that’s without counting the items of furniture which the organisation that runs the place has decided to keep.

Or, come to that, the bits and pieces my brother and I simply couldn’t bring ourselves to part with. I came home with my car full. But not just of those objects – above all, what I had was boxes and boxes of photos and correspondence, not just my mother’s, but my father’s, even my maternal grandmother’s and grandfather’s.

Leonard, my father, amateur writer who generated another

Strangely, both my maternal grandmother and my father were keen amateur writers, as I am. I now have a box file labelled in my mother’s hand as her mother’s writings, as I have another of my father’s. My grandmother’s papers included several sealed envelopes marked ‘Before destroying these manuscripts, have a little patience, and read them. Your relative had a questing mind, and a certain literary facility.’

Well, I shall be the first to fulfil that wish since she died. I shall break the seals on those envelopes. That will be a time of some emotion. I’ll have a reminder that death is about loss and bereavement and not just about a banal and tedious bureaucratic process.

Sadly, before I can get around to that, I still have to get through some correspondence with the public authorities, a meeting with a lawyer at £280 an hour, to say nothing of dealing with any outstanding payments due for utilities, phones or, indeed, funeral services.

It’ll be a poignant moment when I can turn my attention to my grandmother’s writing. And my father’s. But oh, what a relief that will be.

Yetta Bannister, a while before she became my grandmother
An amateur writer in the making

Wills' wheels: making the right choice

‘Tube strike to hit Will’s big day’ screamed the headlines in the evening papers the other day.

For those of you who don’t closely follow the doings of minor celebrities in Britain, let me explain that we have a character over here called ‘Prince William’, popularly known as ‘Wills’. That nickname always puts me in mind of a collection of documents concerning a succession. That may not be inappropriate, since nothing he does in his life is going to be more important than what he inherits.

I'm given to understand that this spring he’s due to marry a woman called ‘Kate’. This I suppose is what is meant by his big day.

Interesting that the papers didn’t seem to think it was her big day too. That may be an oversight or it might be evidence of rarely displayed insight. After all, recent experiences of women marrying into the royal family haven’t been been particularly edifying. Perhaps the editors are hedging their bets, just in case for Kate it turns out to be an ominous day to forget, rather than a big day to cherish.

The tube, of course, is the London Underground. Staff on the tube have been taking a series of one-day strikes in recent months in protest at the stringent limitations now being put on pay, as a consequence of the government’s initiative to save the economy through austerity. It is a central plank of the government’s approach that cutbacks are to be applied fairly, and indeed it isn’t only on the Underground that people are complaining: London bankers, for instance, have been much in the news recently for their resistance of equally draconian attempts to rein back their bonuses.

Of course, the difference between the bankers and the tube employees is that the each banker’s bonus would cover the salary of forty or fifty train drivers, and the bankers will lean on the government and get their way, while the tube people will strike and fail.

But what fascinated me was that the planned action was going to have such an impact on poor Wills. I had no idea he was planning to travel by tube on that day. Usually these characters get some kind of funeral cortege together, with dozens of cars full of the self-selected great and good, and cavalry men clip-clopping along with shiny helmets and red tunics. They then proceed to jam up the streets of the capital for several hours. You’ve got to admit that it’s admirable of Wills to have chosen to cram into a heaving carriage on the Central or Piccadilly line along with the rest of us. It’s a nice popular touch, but it must have been a bit of a sacrifice to give up the chauffer-driven limousine.

Perhaps that’s what the Unions were thinking of. By striking on that day, they’ll be giving him every pretext to get out the big car after all, which should be a relief to him.

Wills: displaying the common touch, and an unsuspected talent for funny faces

So I think the papers may have got it wrong: far from hitting Wills' big day, it may be that the strikers are expressing their royal fervour and making sure things will be just as he would wish.