I'm home now. Much, much better, although so tired I can barely function.
Yesterday went well. I remained polite and dignified and was nice to people.
The service was nice; Dad's brother and I had both written pieces, and the celebrant read them in full, then the piece by s/mother. I'm glad to say we both raised a few smiles and the odd chuckle.
Some of you will remember the lovely idea someone had for Mavis, whereby lots of us sent a single red rose. S/mother had said just one flower arrangement for the coffin - but the announcement also said 'family flowers only'.
Well, all those left of Mum's family, as well as Dad's, all consider themselves family, so I came up with using the same idea and all those I spoke to liked it.
So D ordered 4 red roses, one each for her, me, Bb and her son.
Dad's brother's wife (K) did a beautiful basket of ten yellow roses for that side of the family.
My twin cousins, their two brothers, and their husbands/wives brought 14 red roses from that bit of the family, and another cousin brought her own red rose.
I had address labels, we each wrote our name on and stuck them round the stems.
The funeral director took mine to place on the coffin
The celebrant saw all the roses and came up with a lovely suggestion (which I did get her to check with s/mother, but who could hardly say no). At the beginning of the service she invited all those with single roses to come up and place them on the coffin; afterwards we all said that was the part that brought a tear to the eye.
There was a particular couple I'd tried and tried to contact - the cricketer Graham Thorpe's parents. They were old, old friends of both my mum and dad; Mum went to youth club with them both, then Dad played cricket with Geoff and taught Graham; he founded the Two Counties youth league that Graham first played in.
Anyway, they were there, someone had told them - I was especially glad as they were in the little piece I'd written, not by name but they knew it was them, enjoying bacon butties while watching the cricket world cup at 4.30 in the morning
K especially wanted their basket of roses to go to Mum's memorial place - it's a beautiful little garden of remembrance at the church where she and Dad were married, and where her funeral service was held, so this morning D and I took them there and spent a rather nice few sweet/sad minutes.
The only thing I didn't manage to change was to officially add my chosen charity to s/mother's - s/mother didn't actually object, I just ran out of energy. But I got my collecting tin in time, so although it wasn't at the service I took it to the 'do' afterwards; D and I emptied it last night, we got £105 which we were thrilled with
