Today I received a scanned copy of the funeral director's bill. I am meant to sign it and then e-mail it back but what a faff that is! I think I will drop in on them tomorrow morning. The office is not far from the recycling centre.
For your information, the total cost of the funeral - including church fees will be £3,700 ($4507 US). This does not include a small-scale post-funeral reception in one of the local pubs. Fortunately, three months ago, Simon transferred a decent sum of money into our bank account - sufficient to cover his funeral costs.
The saga will continue way beyond his burial a week from today. I have written "The Probate Maze" in my notebook. Just locating an office which could send me the appropriate application form was a challenge in itself and then of course there were the obligatory phone queues and numbered options before I finally spoke with a human being who promised to mail me the twenty one page document. He said it would arrive "in a few days". We will see. I am not brimming with confidence about that promise.
Tying up all the loose ends of my brother's "estate" and bringing it to a proper conclusion will take a long time - possibly a year. It would have all been so much easier if Simon had left a will. I know he wanted to but he hesitated far too long until it was too late.
It will be me delivering the eulogy in the church where we were both christened. Thanks to my long time blogging chum Bob Brague in Georgia USA for suggesting that a eulogy should celebrate a person's life - speaking positively and graciously about the departed. And that is how it will be. It's not a time for criticism or dark truths. Simon could not help who he was and I guess that that is the same for all of us. We never decide who we will become and we don't buy our personalities in shops. We evolve and make our marks almost in spite of ourselves. That's what I think anyway.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/PDWGsON
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