It has been one of those strange few days that feel out of time and out of space.
For part of the time, I've kept busy. For the remainder of the time, I've just slumped and been out of it. If I've got an external reason to do something, then I'll do it; otherwise I can't see the point. I'm just tired and weary.
Tuesday, mum and I went from task to task. We talked through the funeral arrangements with the Funeral Directors, we got the Death Certificate sorted and we made official contact with the Ask us Once service at Heswall's One-Stop-Shop. Then, I went home and fell asleep on the sofa.
Wednesday, we registered the death at Birkenhead Town Hall, handed over the green form to the Funeral Directors and made a few changes to the service, had some lunch and then used the Ask us Once service to set in motion all the necessary changes to Pensions, Tax, Passports and Community Charge - so much easier than having to contact each agency individually.
The most poignant part of all of this was that it was my mum's birthday and, on all of the forms that we had to complete, she was asked for her date of birth as the deceased widow. On each occasion, the official paused to take in the implication of the information they had just been given before expressing profound regret.
Thursday, nominally, I taught. That is to say that I was in school but, somehow, my colleagues all engineered circumstances where I was not left on my own or was given space on my own to do some marking. With nothing to do in the evening, I just slept on the sofa again. Friday was an Inset day. I don't remember much about it. I was introduced to a new colleague but, frankly, I couldn't pick her out of a line up if the future of the world depended on it.
Linda was up at the weekend. There has been a long-standing diary entry for the weekend for a family meal to celebrate mum's birthday. It went ahead. Whilst it wasn't the jolliest of occasions, we all made valiant attempts to keep the conversation light and flowing and I made one very unsubtle intervention to head mum off before she went down the maudlin nostalgia route.
The best thing to come out of the day was the general agreement that we wouldn't repeat the procedure after the funeral, which we now know will be on this coming Friday.
I've spent most of the weekend working on the Order of Service so the get together allowed everyone the chance to agree the final draft. So, far everything seems to be proceeding in an orderly fashion. Linda's been able to sort out a couple of insurance matters and inform the two relevant private pension companies.
I'm just hoping that everything continues as smoothly.