The sideboard is filled with cards, and the table is full of vases of white lilies, a flower none of us like. It’s beginning to feel like the front door is host to some kind of haunted letterbox, too; we can’t turn our back without another note arriving on the mat. Letters - handwritten on thick personalised stationery with a fountain pen - tell us that we must be devastated, that he was the very best of men, that he was stoic and silent in his illness.
My mother, my sisters and I go to register the death, then to the funeral director to choose the cheapest coffin and plan the cremation and memorial details. There may be hundreds at the service. We rarely stop laughing, giddy fools, while our mother alternates between fondly rolling her eyes and kicking us silent so she can give details of her husband’s birthday, their wedding day, the GP who cared for him until his death, five days ago.
In his absence, we are swearing a lot. It mostly makes our mother laugh.