I once counted our books. When I got to 1000 I gave up. Some are precious and I devour them regularly. Others I dust off occasionally, but a few I have never read. Mainly because they were my hubbys and generally are about wars, trains or tractors. I like some of them, but they are generally big and heavy, full of pictures and technical details. I think some of them will go to a charity shop.
I guess they could act as insulation! Some of them are high up on tall shelves. I would have to climb up ladders to get up to them. I’m not sure if anyone will ever read them!
When something happens to a relative or partner no one explains what you need to do. If you’ve never done it before it can be daunting and if you don’t know what services are out there where do you start?
Children might learn civics at school but adults can’t attend bereavement classes as far as I’m aware. Maybe that should be my mission, to set up a group to help. But at the moment I’m not up to doing that. However I have found out a few things that might help if you live in the UK.
Firstly you need to register the death if that is your responsibility. In England there are local registrars of births, deaths and marriages. You need to make an appointment to do this. They will issue original death certificates. Also contact funeral directors to decide what sort of funeral you want (and can afford).
Once you have the death certificates you will be able to nominate your funeral director to release the body. They will then make arrangements for the funeral. There are now direct or simple cremations that are basic and if you are left in financial difficulty they might be the most suitable. I felt guilty but had discussed this with my partner because we knew he was very ill.
Find out from the department of work and pensions if you are entitled to a funeral or bereavement allowance. The funeral allowance depends on whether you are on an income based allowance. The bereavement payment does not, and gives a small lump sum plus a monthly payment for 18 months.
Find out if you are a beneficiary for your partners private pension if they have one. If you have both written wills make sure you have nominated each other for this. I had to send the death certificate and will plus other information off to the company. Make sure you know each other’s national insurance numbers so that you can quote it if required. Ideally you would also know the policy number (keep paperwork! Don’t throw it away, you never know what you need).
Think about contacting an advice line or charity for financial support, it may be that they can put you in touch with fuel suppliers, water suppliers, and other companies. If your income is suddenly reduced you need to know how you can pay bills. There are charities and trusts out there that might be able to help with grants.
Contact solicitors to discuss rewriting your will if your partner has passed away. This may also require changing the executors of a will and also what to do if you need to go to probate (not something that I have dealt with yet).
Advise other companies like banks, phone suppliers and other groups to transfer their account into your name if you are the sole beneficiary or if these need to go to probate to determine the best way to share out any estate.
By now my head was buzzing. Every time I think I’ve done everything something else comes up. Above all don’t think you can do everything at once. Give yourself time to grieve and take care of yourself.
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
When I searched for “dove of peace by Picasso” in the WordPress image search engine this was one of the pictures I got!
If a search engine can’t find an image of a dove of peace what chance have we got? There were pictures of a woman with sun tan lotion under her eyes? A sunset, clouds, a possible white wing with feathers. I guess I should do my own version but it’s late and I just wanted to write this.
Symbological images are important. An image of a white dove is, I would guess, almost universally understood as meaning peace. White doves are released at sporting events. They are clean and innocent looking (why don’t they use black doves too?), in some ways it could be stereotyping white to equal good? But I’m not seeking to answer that question here.
What we need is not the symbol, but the actuality, where are the people with the moral strength to say enough is enough. Oppression must end, fairness must reign, understanding must come to the fore, eventually instead of collateral damage and bloody mayhem..war must end. We must give peace a chance.
Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
The past is behind me, I cannot change it. I want to, but it’s twisted up like knots or knitting. Tangled threads that tie everything in place. Nothing can escape again, so I say let it be. Don’t get caught in it’s net and be held back by the past.
The future is out of control without a time machine. Each step of the day splits and shatters into a miriad of gleaming shards. Each action reflects against the next and distorts the future more and more, until the never ending possibilities are too mixed up to see clearly.
So I prefer now. I grip it tightly and try to hang on, like holding a tiger by its tail as it thrashes about. I try and control it as much as I can, I never know if it will slip my grasp and fall apart. But I try.
Most of my studies were arts based. But I genuinely think that having an art degree helped me with understanding the imaging techniques of Radiography. I only just passed that course though because I wasn’t very good at Physics.
Life might have been different if I had persued a career as a radiographer. I was very good at positioning patients and producing accurate images. But I got into trouble once because I took an xray of someone and the lecturer said it would be impossible to take it without moving the patient. BUT I had used a very mobile xray machine that you could position at any angle or height. I got the supervising Radiographer to confirm I had done it correctly. Even so I was marked down and given a minimum pass mark for the film. That’s when I fell out of love with that particular course.
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
I’ve recently found a hexagonal game where you have to match up three or more hexagons to join them together and create a higher value hexagon. You get points when you join them, but you also have to avoid fully blocking the grid you play on or you lose. Most of the time you get dual hexagons with two seperate numbers, but sometimes you get a duplicated number, or a single hexagon. Merging hexagons clear spaces and if you make a big enough number the lowest hexagons are removed from the grid. You can rotate the hexagons to put them in better positions to link them up. My highest score was over 56000.
You can tell from this description that I’ve been playing it a lot lately. It’s mind numbing and distracting me from the outside world. I think its called mega hexa? Avoid if you don’t want to get addicted to it!
Mallaband-Brown 