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| My mother managed to put the 'fun' back into funeral. |
For the record and the sake of my sanity, here's the fiasco of my mother's funeral. When my mother died in Sep 2011, I knew that her funeral was all pre-arranged, because when my father's mother died back in 1993, he bought two funeral plans for himself and my mother out of the proceeds of the sale of her house. He always liased with me on these things, so I knew about them. As I'd jointly arranged my father's funeral in 2001, I already had experience of the whole procedure.
Of course, because my mother had made a recent - very successful - career out of convincing people that I'm entirely stupid, lazy and a liar, I was judged incapable of being able to handle this. My mother was admitted to hospital in August with a virus - obviously a risk factor in addition to the chronic leukemia she was having chemotherapy treatment for - but it was the fact that she was subsequently pumped full of IV antibiotics by the hospital that probably finished her off.
This is something I can say confidently, because antibiotics are absolutely not indicated for viral infections and, in addition to the chemo (the chemo she denied having, but it's in writing on her death certificate!) depleted her immune system. So I queried the antibiotic use with the hospital doctor. Pretty sure it was as a result of my raising this issue that, despite the fact it wouldn't normally be done when she was already in hospital, they involved the coroner. To me, that means they knew they'd done wrong and were perhaps expecting a complaint.
Anyway, despite the relationship we had, I compassionately kept up the pretence that she could get better. It's what you do if you're a decent human being.
On the other hand, a so-called [former] family friend visited this frail, dying, old woman in hospital and outright asked her if she had organised her funeral.
How do I know this? Because the idiot came straight round to the house to 'proudly' announce exactly what he'd just done, clearly in panic with the impression that I couldn't know what was already organised nor be able to carry out those plans. He's not related and at no point ever was he going to be responsible for this.
Seriously, I could not believe what he was saying and that he had been callous and insensitive enough to ask my mother such a question. I was and am, horrified and incandescent with rage and sent him away to never darken my door again.
Very deliberately, because of this unforgivable behaviour, I did not invite him to the funeral, but he just didn't get it and gate-crashed it anyway, along with his wife and other uninvited parties. He also contacted me again afterwards, claiming that certain things I did - like where her ashes were scattered - was not what my mother wanted. It was what was pre-arranged. It's possible my mother could have had one of her hairbrained ideas (that wouldn't have been allowed anyway) that she'd mentioned to him, but remember, I had the funeral plan in writing. He could f*ck right off. He kept ringing and I blocked him in the end. I've had no further contact, but I'll bet he hasn't worked it out and still thinks I'm in the wrong.
If she had changed her mind since those 1993 plans had been written, she had not told me, neither had she had the plans amended or changed and it was not up to me to make any changes to them based upon any "hearsay". So I didn't.
Oh and I was her executor, so I was officially, legally, responsible.
Even I was surprised at the detail in the funeral plan in writing. The only item not included in the price was the person to conduct the funeral. So I chose and briefed a non-religious celebrant and everyone was very complimentary about it.
Obviously, I wrote what the celebrant delivered - I don't think anyone considered that I had, or it would have been criticised, I have no doubt - and I will say that he did deliver it beautifully, naturally, as though he actually knew the person he was talking about. We also included music from my mother's collection.
The only other item I had to chose was the colour of shroud. So I asked the funeral director if he had one in beige. Yeah, I was being sarcastic, but she loved beige.
The funeral plan included both the hearse and a limo. Because of issues with neighbours (the ones who threatened and slandered me, who I didn't want turning up at the funeral, nor coming out to heap yet more abuse at a cortege), I chose not to have the hearse come to the house, but to meet us at the cemetery.
All through her life my mother had been utterly incapable of being ready on time. So much so that, for example, if they were going out somewhere, my father would tell her to be ready half an hour earlier than needed. He knew it was the only way she would ever even approach punctuality. So, we got to the cemetery in the limo and had to wait for the hearse. Yep, she was late for her own funeral.
At which point I disolved into fits of giggles. As you do.
For the same reason of not wanting abusive, disrespecting people at the house, I did not arrange a wake and didn't want to be at home in case anyone turned up expecting one, so I and a couple of friends went down the pub and raised a glass. If my mother had been there, I'm sure she'd have been happy with that.
On the morning of the funeral, additionally, it became clear that a group of mother's work colleagues thought the “no flowers” request I'd communicated was my choice, and therefore they were going to totally disregard it. Why would they do that, unless they'd been 'trained' by her to disbelieve and disregard me? Would they have disregarded a similar request from anyone else's family? Absolutely not. It was only once I'd pointed out that this was my mother's wish – which could be confirmed by her similar request for no flowers at my father's funeral that they had helped out on – that they seemed prepared to do as requested.
For the record, after living in Spain for 16 years, where the norm at funerals is for masses of huge floral tributes, if I were to have imposed my preference, it would have been to have had as many bright and cheerful flowers as possible to lift the spirits of the day. But it wasn't about me and, despite our history, I actually did everything my mother had wanted and followed plans to the letter.
The flowers I had placed on the coffin should have been the only ones, according to her wishes, and were a very deliberate choice of the nearest to the roses that she'd had in her bridal bouquet. It was what she had chosen for my father's funeral and it was what was most significant to her, which she had often mentioned.
It was also deliberate that they were just a simple, un-arranged spray. My mother's flower arranging and floristry work was outstanding, so I was not about to insult her by giving her someone else's, inevitably inferiorly, arranged flowers.
But there were lots of arranged flowers for her at the cemetery, so lots of people had ignored the request after all - my mother wanted donations to go to Cancer Research instead, just as she had asked for, and got, for my father's funeral - but because of the lies she had spread about me, people disregarded her wish.
She was, deservedly, hoisted by her own petard in the end.
