There must have been a time when death was, relatively speaking, simple. You arranged the funeral, and, as and when you felt ready, gave away or sold the dead person's belongings. Then you got on with grieving, and with the rest of your life.
Given the stress and grief which results from the death of a much loved parent, it really ought to be as simple as possible, depending on the complexity of their affairs.
Since we've long known and agreed, in discussion with our mother, that whatever money and possessions she had when she died were simply to be divided equally amongst myself and my two sisters, none of us thought it was necessary for her to write a will. Well, we were wrong. Just the act of designating an executor to sort things out after her death would have been made a great deal easier if she had specified that in a will. Instead, I have to inventory and value her estate and then pay a personal visit to the Sheriff Court in Lanark in order to apply for "confirmation to the estate". I know I could get a solicitor to do some of the stuff for me, but I also feel that it shouldn't be necessary to spend several hundred pounds on solicitor's fees for a process that relates to something as inevitable as someone dying.
Then, today, I started clearing out my mother's clothes. I found I could only do it a bit at a time - bundling up the things she wore, to keep, throw out, or take to a charity shop, becomes stifling after a short while. Every item placed in a bag drives home the knowledge that she won't be coming back, that she has no further need for these things. And that's difficult to cope with for more than a short period at a time, without taking a break.
However I'm lucky. I've got my partner Chris, and my two sisters and their families. Some people have to deal with this kind of thing on their own, with no-one else around them to help, or offer support. That must be very difficult. The fact that my sisters and I can give each other a hug (real or virtual) when we cry, and we know the other person really understands how we feel, helps.
Beth and I cried yesterday at the end of the Formula 1 Grand Prix, because we both remembered how much our mother enjoyed watching it. She and Beth usually watched it together. And again today, we talked about the issue of deleting our mother's contact details from our various electronic address books (IM, email, mobile phone, etc), and we found ourselves crying again. But it was OK each time, because we didn't have to feel embarrassed, or that we had to suppress the tears. We just hugged each other until the tears stopped, and then carried on with ordinary things.
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