Oh Blondes, is M's funeral on Thursday? Wishing you lots of strength and love for that day. MrsHunt, thank you for that poem - it's amazing how comforting words can actually be.
My brother read the following poem at Richard's funeral:
All Is Well
Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was,
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It it the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,
Just around the corner.
All is well.
Last night at around 4am - when woken by Jasmine - I heard a nightingale singing again. It was so beautiful and clear and just in the trees at the back of my garden. My father had a bit of a thing about nightingales and recorded some in the woods on his farm about 30 years ago. At his funeral last year, this recording was played followed by Nat King Cole singing A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. So it was especially lovely hearing this bird sing last night, just outside my window. Very comforting 
I am still thrilled to bits re the £10k. That is going to make a difference to someone who really needs it. I am also thrilled that the 'associates' who made those awful bloody calls will be doing something. The MD seems really committed to make sure this does not happen again to anyone else, which can only be a good thing.
Am totally and utterly knackered now though. I should be sleeping. The lovely lady who is my sort of mother's help has come back for a couple of hours this evening to give me a break. I need to take advantage of that and realise that the bloody paperwork (God, there's just so much of it!) will wait.