This afternoon I was reminded, with far too much emphasis, of one reason why I didn’t see dad very often – the M25.
The idea was I would go up to Letchworth so that sister 2 would have some help with all the various arrangements, but after 3 hours on the road I had only travelled about 75 miles. I actually spent more than an hour on the roundabout at South Mimms! That is the junction of the A1(M) and the M25 and it was jammed, even though the A1(M) and M25 were both OK. It was a classic example of gridlock where the the traffic was being held up by itself.
If someone had just stopped more cars coming on for 5 minutes it would have cleared itself. It was only as I was within sight of my exit that some police turned up (on foot) to start directing traffic to clear it up. I have had some bad luck with journeys up to Herts but this was definitely the worst. Its very tempting to just go straight through London, or at least take the South/North Circular route. Surely it can’t be any worse.
In the end it took about 3hrs 40mins to do the 100-mile trip and when I got there Mary had already made funeral arrangements, cancelled the milk and papers, got credit cards cancelled and bashed her head against the brick wall of Virgin Media’s customer services trying to get the cable and telephone cancelled – with some help from her husband and our dad’s late wife’s children. (Does that make them step-sisters?)
They have been brilliant, and not just this week. Their mum must have died ten years ago, but they kept in touch with dad, as they only live in the next village, and as he got less well they made sure to keep an eye on him and have been visiting a couple of times a week.
Before it got dark we all went out and found the crematorium and a nearby pub with a room we could hire for after the funeral. There are just so many things left to do and thinking about it just reminds you of other things to do until you start to suffer from a personal gridlock. Well I do anyway. The girls have been a lot more practical than me.
I will have to be careful next time I go back though. As everyone keeps pointing out, I do bear more than a passing resemblance to my dad and when I came out of his house today at the same time as his neighbours it gave them a bit of a shock…
Hope Dad’s neighbours recovered from their shock. If I were on full nag mode I would point out that none of us want to you to share Dad’s general health etc. But obviously, as Rob tells me, nagging is counter-productive….
Sorry I couldn’t get down to help more – although I did talk with Mary on the phone a couple of times (as I had my laptop going I was acting as internet liason to the sat-nav she’d borrowed off Mum!)
I know. I was in the front with David listening to Mary’s half of the conversation, interspersed with the satnav saying “at the earliest opportunity do a U-ie”
I don’t trust the things.
Bit worrying when we arrived at the crematorium and it said “you have reached your destination”. Must be a zen model or something.