Friday 31st of March. I wake up in the hotel and I am confronted by a stag, emblematic of Richmond Park. Its a bit of a shock to wake up to.

Today was my sisters funeral, so after a slow start to the day and a careful breakfast my family assembled the hotel reception in their best black. A limousine took us to the crematorium where we met mourners and accompanied my sisters coffin into the chapel. The service itself was appropriately non religious and according to her friends reflected her well. I delivered my tribute in the middle of the service to be followed by the visual presentation of my sisters life and work. We left to the sound Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Spring, hopefully giving people a bit of an appropriately seasonal lift as they left. The usual pleasantries over I shepherded my family back into the limo and back to the hotel for a post funeral drink. My first brandy in four years.

The family dispersed to divest itself of black and gathered again later to go for an afternoon coffee and sandwich at a nearby café, albeit a trudge through rain to get to it. Back at the hotel some use the SPA and I draft the blog. This evening we will wine and dine as a family at a nearby pub before going our different ways tomorrow. My over whelming feeling is one of relief. I feel that I have given my sister a funeral that she would have felt at home with and those attending and watching via the webcast felt that it was the person they knew. I feel a sense of completion for her life. There will be months of dealing with the finalisation of her estate and the fulfilment of her Will but as far as she is concerned I feel that she has made her contribution in person and that is up to all of us who have her in our experience to continue to ensure her contribution lives on through us. There is a quote from Terry Pratchett that I used in my Tribute which I think sums this up well.

“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s existence is only the core of their actual life.”