My mum died last weekend quite suddenly. I am heartbroken which sounds like a cliché but isn’t. It truly hurts.
My mum did not want a funeral and so instead I have decided to organise a memorial service in about a month’s time. In the meantime, my mum is having a direct cremation which should happen in the next week also which was what she wanted. I’ll be scattering her ashes on her favourite beach later on in the year.
It does seem that a large proportion of the elderly people in our local area must have died around the same time as the first appointment I could get to register her death is not until 11 April! To keep myself busy, as well as clearing out her house, I have already booked the venue for a memorial service which is a suitably hippy woodland burial site. My mum was an art student in the 60s and was a real hippy wild child of her day and so the day will need to be not your normal common or garden memorial service so as to reflect a very cool personality.
I have booked the caterer to prepare a funeral tea after the memorial service which will both take place on the same site. I am meeting a humanist celebrant who seems appropriately liberal and broad minded. My brother is a graphic designer and he is going to prepare a large display board with photographs and memories of our mum and he will also design an order of service. We will play her favourite music as people walk in (Joni Mitchell) and in the background whilst people are eating the funeral tea. Because of distance and age of attendees and a few family rifts, I am expecting about 35 people.
What have I forgotten? Is there anything that I should also be thinking of? My brain is a lot like a heady mixture of scrambled eggs and porridge right now. Any advice or suggestions would be gratefully received.