Yesterday was a very long and very difficult day. There seemed to be a lot of standing about waiting with large groups of strangers about – I was feeling that maybe I hadn’t known Katrin very well when Bil made a comment that made me realise he didn’t have a clue who at least half the ppl were either, so I guess there were a lot of my parents friends there as well as his relatives.
The church service was about as manageable as any funeral service of a young person can ever be. It offends our sense of rightness I think when young ppl die – I remember going to the funeral of a service user I’d worked with and thinking something very similar. We want the world to be fair, which is odd, as we very often are not fair ourselves, and we get deeply upset when events don’t comply. Anyway, we sang hymns, and listened to the vicar telling us that crying is what we need to do, J read out a letter she’d prepared and I read Do not stand at my grave. I worked very hard at not looking at anyone and breathing deeply and I read it without a single wobble (although there were a couple of slightly longer than absolutely necessary pauses) and I worried afterwards whether ppl thought I didn’t care because I wasn’t crying. But it’s up to me how I grieve and it’s not a public performance necessarily.
The long pause outside the church when ppl I haven’t seen for years was difficult – Tim took the children including Princess off to the pub at that point, and then we all loaded up again and went to the crem. After a mercifully short service there we somehow ended up in kind of a receiving line – I was next to Bil and we shared a level of disbelief at how many ppl came out of the doors and passed along the line with condolences. “There weren’t that many chairs” he said, and I pointed out they had been stood at the sides and at the back. “They’ve got to stop coming out soon” – I told him that I thought they’d just made a circle and were going round and round…I got a smile for that suggestion!
Eventually we went back to the pub and spent the afternoon watching my son pretend to be Incredible Hulk (this included stripping his shirt off – I made him ask Grandma for permission, and she helped him with the buttons!) while talking again with ppl I haven’t seen for years. I was accused of cloning – apparently Small is almost identical to me at age 5 – this from the neighbour who lived next to us at that point. (And today someone saw Big through the door at school and did a double take thinking it was me – they don’t really look that much like me do they?) And a friend of J’s quizzed me about Montessori and will be coming to look around the school I suspect soon.
We were late home and the children were very tired. They’d coped fantastically well with the day – Small was extremely well behaved in the church although it all hit him just as we were about to file out (to the strains of The Rose, which I hadn’t expected so I struggled with that) and he absolutely wailed, which meant I got to pick him up and carry him out which perversely made following the coffin easier. Then somehow last night I didn’t want the day to end and to go to bed – it all seemed so very final so Tim and I stayed up far too late talking, which probably explains why I’ve had a stinking headache all afternoon and feel like someone has set fire to my eyes. Urk, must go to bed early tonight.
Especially as today has been Thursday. For some reason Thursday is our most difficult day. Complicated further by the fact that two children were finishing today – it’s the end of the summer term and many children are leaving to go on to other schools, including quite a large batch who’ve been there since the school opened. Which has been difficult for the staff, and I have been less that understanding – I think on some levels I’m cried out atm.
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