A Difficult Day!

Today has been extremely difficult indeed. I spent this morning ringing everyone up in mother's address book, to inform them that she had passed away, which resulted in lots of tearful phone calls! Ringing up names from the 'old days' was very emotional and shocking to hear that some of the people I rang had passed away with either their wife or husband remaining – how short our lives are!

Vivien and I have sorted out and booked Holme Village Hall for the wake and have booked caterers for food. I then had to drive to King's Lynn to pick Lucy up and returned to Holme to find that Vivien was missing?! Lucy and I then drove to Hunstanton and found that Vivien was also in Hunstanton! We then went to John Lincoln's (funeral directors) to 'view' mother in their chapel of rest at 3pm. Traumatic is an understatement, very emotional. The undertakers made a very good job of making mother look pretty and she certainly looked a lot better then when we last saw her on the awful morning of her death. We had chosen the clothes she wore at father's funeral – a small print floral pink/lilac and cream blouse and lilac cardigan with black trousers from the Edinburgh Wool Shop. Her hands were crossed and she looked at peace in her white silk lined coffin. We spent a long time with her and it was torture to leave.

We returned home to Holme and had cake and strong tea to recover! We lit a candle and had a toast with our teacups to Mother and Father and to us. We are going to need huge strength to get through the coming days, weeks and months – there is so much to do, far more than you can possibly imagine. Sorting out the house will be a nightmare and the big question of what do we do with the house! We need to write the Eulogy, find one of mother's poems from years ago, write death notices for the papers etc etc.

This evening I was on the phone to BT for over 60 minutes, informing them of mothers's death, clarifying what will happen next, getting compensation for the lack of internet in May/June and getting a technical engineer to find out why I can't send emails – long story short, they are sending me out the latest Smart Hub which 'Macs' prefer and when I receive and install this, I should be able to reply/send emails – we'll see! Good night!