You die.
There's a form for that.
You need to be declared dead.
There;s a for for that.
The body needs to be released.
There's a form for that.
Cremation?
Fill in this form.
And for the ashes to be interred with Dad's:
Fill in this form and return signed.
So it goes, so it goes.
I had been back home 12 hours when the alarm went off at four. Needless to say it was still dark outside, and cold. We had coffee, fed the cats and go in the car for the trek to Suffolk.
On a good day, it's three hours and twenty minute run. But on a Friday morning in November, who knows?
We had to be in town by ten in the morning, so we had to allow for traffic bottlenecks and rush hours. That was time we were to be at Dad's memorial for the interrment of Mum's ashes alongside Dad's. United for eternity where I'm sure they have lots to talk about.
Ahem.
We blast up the A2/Ms, and all was going well until we got within five miles of the Dartford Crossing, and we hit jams. Stop start for a few minutes, and my panic levels start to rise. But it clears and we cruise onto the M25 and chug along to the tunnel, and out the other side into Essex.
Always the choice of which was to go, but the A12 is more direct, but passes nearby many more towns, and that could mean more delays, and the M11 goes near Cambridge then through the Suffolk countryside.
Choices, choices.
I go for the A12, hoping that the early hour, just after six would mean the traffic on the roundabout wouldn't be too bad. We get round that without accident, so cruise northwards past Chelmsford, Colchester and into Suffolk and Ipswich.
Where the A12 joins the A14, there was half a mile of delays, but again not too bad, and then north of there, there was little traffic.
It was now daylight, and the familiar Suffolk countryside passes by. At Blythburgh, the tide was out, so the estuary was all mud, and dotted with wading bords feeding in the short daylight before the tide turned and buried the worms they were seeking.
Through the woodlands surrounding Henham Hall, home to Latitude in the summer months, and then back in really familiar territory of Wangford and Kessingland.
Traffic was heavy at the South Lowestoft Industrial Estate, where Zephyr Cams used to make engine parts, its now a huge cookware store and a drive through Costa Coffee.
Times change.
And even more so in Oulton Broad, where along Bridge Road back in the day would be clogged with people cycling and driving to work up to Victoria Road. All those shipyards, canning factories and so on are closed. Oulton Broad was as quiet as a Sunday morning. It was ten past eight on a Friday morning.
On to Mum's, where the house is still standing, now only faintly smelling of tobacco, but feeling cold despite the heating being on, as only an empty shell of a former home can be.
There is no mail to sort through, as that is redirected. All there is to do is to pack an eight sitting Royal Dalton dinner service that the house clearers had missed as it was stored in a void behind the wall unit in the old master bedroom.
We get it out of the hiding place, most of the soup bowls, tureens, ramekins and so on, still in their wrappers when Mum bought it in 1989 to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. It must have cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds. We had no use for it, just the two of us. No room to store it anyway.
We load it in the back of the car to take to the auctioneers for selling.
By nine we were done.
So we drove to the municipal cemetery where in a corner are the cremation memorials, where four of my blood relations are laid, and Mum will join Dad in under an hour.
We walk to the area, and two council workers sit in a van, and among the stones two have been reopened and a fresh hole dug. One is where Dad's ashes were buried, though I guess the casket has rotted away in the 23 years since, but there must be traces of him somewhere. A lady from the funeral directors comes along and deposits an urn beside each hole, one is Mum.
A friend, pat, was to join us, so we wait, sitting on a bench. The other internment goes ahead with no mourners, just Simone from the churchyard office, she laid the urn in the hole, and the two workers get out of their van, shovels in hand, and cover the hole, remove the fake plastic grass used to hide the freshly dug earth.
Dad's grave has the same fake plastic grass around it.
Pat arrives at quarter to ten, we hug, and I read out the speech from the funeral as she missed it.
At the end, Jools laid Mum in the hole, I said "I hope you find in eternity, whatever you spent your life trying to fill the hole where your Mother's love should have been". I scattered earth.
And it was done.We walk away and the two workers approach the spot, remove the fake plastic grass, cover the hole with earth, load up the van and drive away.
We say goodbye to Pat. She does things on her own terms, and we feel we won't see her again, which is her choice.
We drive to the South Lowestoft Industrial Estate to the auction House to drop the dinner service off.
Its an eight piece set I tell the guy.
He hands me an apple box.
That is nowhere big enough, I say.
You mean an eight setting service?
Yes.
When we brought it in all contained in 5 cardboard boxes, the guy said, how'd we miss that?
And we were done.
Another piece of paper to sign, and we could go home.
We arrived at the White Hart, Blythburgh, two minutes after midday.
We were hungry, so we took a table by the large open fire, set in a huge hearth, and looked at the menu. I ordered a cheeseboard to go with the pint of Adnams Old I also ordered.
A pint of Old is like a roaring fire on a cold day, very warming, and if I could, I would have stayed all day, supping from the barrel. But we had to get home.
The cheeseboard was splendid, laded with four Suffolk cheeses and an array of four types of crackers. It was wonderful.
We just had a two hour drive after it.
So, we leave the fireside table and walk to the car. Heavy ran had begun to fall, and the day was almost turned if not to night, dark enough for the car to think is was time to dim the dashboard lights.
We drove south without incident, into Essex and down to Dartford, where traffic was building, but we got over the river easily enough, then down the A2 again.
We arrived home at four, just as darkness proper was falling. The cats had not missed us.
We fed them, made a brew, then I thought about defrosting a ragu for dinner.
We ate at six, with rain hammering down on the back of the house. The cats were happy to stay beside us. We toasted ourselves and Mum.
Life went on.
We watched an art documentary on TV, before going to bed at nine, worn out again after another packed day.
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