Bye mom - I still miss you so much (Funeral Services in general)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	Funeral Services in general
Date:	12/03/09 (381 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It was a lovely service and a fitting tribute

Disadvantages: A bit of a disagreement with the funeral director

As we're coming up to Mothering Sunday and this will be my first one without a mom, and also coming up to the first anniversary of her death, I thought I would try to deal with it all by telling you about her funeral.

My father had died 3 years before in 2005 a couple of months after our wedding and mom had suggested that I might not want to have his funeral at the church where we married as it might spoil my happy memories. I thought this was very kind of her but I told her that dad had been happy at that church and I didn't want us to take him somewhere strange for his funeral. The minister who had married us performed the ceremony and the company who had provided our wedding cars also provided funeral cars so we returned to them. The whole thing went very smoothly and was a fitting tribute to a truly lovely man.

Although mom had Vascular Dementia she did die quite suddenly. She had a chest infection, which wasn't unusual for her and she was taken into hospital to receive some oxygen one morning and by 6pm that day she had died. As you can imagine I was in shock.

By the time mom died last April the minister had retired and so we did not actually know the minister at the church at the time. We had a meeting with him a few days after mom's death and he asked me to tell him about her. Now I am one of these people who, when I am upset or nervous, can talk the hind legs off a donkey! I am a chatterbox at the best of time but I just talked at this poor man for about half an hour. Luckily mom had left instructions as to the hymns she wanted - How Great Thou Art and Praise My Soul the King of Heaven.

As we left the minister's office I remember saying to my husband that If the minister could sort something decent out from what I had said he would be a real miracle worker!

We also instructed the funeral directors that had organised dad's funeral as they had been so good. I told them that we would only have one large flower arrangement and donations to the lifeboats as mom used to make things to sell for our lifeboat here in Llandudno.

We went to the same florist who had done our wedding and dad's funeral flowers and we ordered a huge display to cover the top of her coffin as she loved flowers. We asked him to split it into three separate arrangements so that, after the funeral, they could be taken to the nursing home where mom had spent the last few months of her life. Yet again he did us proud, the flowers were gorgeous!

The day of the funeral dawned and off we went to the church and the minister was amazing! He spoke about mom as though he had known her for years. I couldn't believe it - it was brilliant the way he managed to do that after the ramblings that I had given him - he obviously had divine intervention.

He even told the story about when mom made an apple pie with what she thought were apples from the freezer - they were in fact parsnips! The best of it was dad poured on the custard and ate his - he said that he wouldn't waste mom's pastry as it was always so nice! (What a creep! LOL!) So we even had a bit of a giggle at the funeral service and mom would have loved that.

The only thing that didn't go as I would have wished was the collection.

After the funeral I asked one of the stewards of the church what had happened to all the money that had been left on the collection plate for us and she said that she thought that the funeral director had taken it.

I rang him the following day and he told me that he had collected it, would pay it into their bank account and then wait for a couple of months to see if any more donations came in. He would then let us have a cheque!

I was furious! He knew that I was a member of our lifeboat guild and thus in a position to deal with the donation. He knew that we had only lived here in Llandudno for 6 years and so it would be extremely unlikely at best that anyone would send any further donations to him and not me. The thing that really made me angry was the fact that he had not even told me that he intended to take my money and pay it into his account!

I demanded that he return the money forthwith. He was quite shirty and said that what he had done was common practice but I reminded him that he is dealing with funerals every day and how was I to know what was common practice if I wasn't told?

We did get it sorted quickly and thankfully it didn't mar what was a really fitting day for my mom.

I hope this hasn't been too boring to read but it has helped me to deal with some of the feelings that are going to be so difficult over the next couple of weeks.

By the way the star rating was difficult - it would be one star because I miss her but 5 because it was a fitting day for her.

Summary: A lovely tribute to my mom