In Memorandum: Rejoice!

Organising my Will

I’m at a stage in my life where I need to organise my Will. I’ve been delaying it for years not wanting to acknowledge the dreadful day but it’s going to happen. It happens to us all. Fact. So I need to put my big girl pants on and say “**k it” and crack on!

While my friends and family will be dealing with the massive gaping hole that I’ve left in their lives – haha – why should they then have to sit down and decide on music, flowers, food, coffins, hearses etc. So I am organising my own. To be honest I NEVER pass on an opportunity to organise a great party, as that’s what it will be. I don’t want a Victorian mourning procession with everyone in black talking in hushed whispers with prayer books and polite smiles at each other. I want everyone in bright colours laughing loudly, sharing memories while I’m transported in a vintage camper van to the church then dancing and drinking at the wake.

I’ve been looking at a few funeral sites online. One really resonates with me. For a fee, of course (and ones that made my eyes water!) they can organise ashes inside fireworks, ribbons for the mourners to tie to my coffin, live bands, funeral services in vintage cinemas….my imagination has gone into overdrive!

I want a day everyone will remember for ever with smiles and laughter. At my father’s funeral it started off, of course, heartbreakingly sombre. Tears, everyone in black, polite conversation etc. When we eventually all got into the church something bizarre happened. On the cover of my father’s service sheet we had put an image of a housemartin bird as my father spent his life flying aeroplanes and was obsessed with the sky. Just after the service started there was a loud fluttering and everyone looked  up. There was what looked like a lone housemartin bird flapping wildly beneath the rafters of the church back and forth. We all erupted into gasps then cried even more!

But more memorably was his wake. Again, it was polite eating and drinking, mingling, reuniting together etc. But late that night, I ended up at a strip club with my father’s flying friends and my boyfriend (now ex husband!). While they all got jiggy with the girls, I also got my boyfriend a dance and sat at the bar alone just chatting to one of the dancers about her life as a single mother and her child and we had a right good gossip over wine! She was such a lovely girl. Anyway, we all got so completely pissed that night that I have no idea how my boyfriend and I got home and the next day there were some very ill faces at my father’s local flying club. We all embarrassingly reminisced what a magnificent send off it was for my father and how he would have been at the club with us if he were still alive!

So that’s what I want! A damn good send off and everyone remembering it for years to come. I want a celebration of my life not a mourning of its demise because that’s who I am. A crazy, happy, friendly, sociable woman who loves Lionel Richie unashamedly, loves Gin – again ditto! – and just wants everyone and the world to be happy and smiling.

There is a serious end to this blog though. In organising my will and my funeral I, of course, am thinking about my life so far. What I’ve done with it, what I’ve achieved, how far I’ve come. I haven’t set the world alight and I’ve never aspired to be the next Richard Branson or the next Sylvia Plath but I’m I love my simple, peaceful, easy life and that’s all that matters to me. More importantly though, I love my son. I wonder how he’ll grow, who’ll he’ll turn into. I’m so proud of all of his 11 years so far and I cannot wait to embarrass him even more in life with my sashaying leopard print capes or selection of hats (mummy you look like a train driver!) or (“mummy why can’t you be like the other mums and just wear a t-shirt and jogging bottoms!”). I remind him how great it is not to be a sheep and to be unique in life but he just rolls his eyes and calls me a “boomer” (that, readers, I’m told, is a gaming geeks term for basically someone who knows nothing!) charming!

So, at my funeral, while my son will probably still be rolling his eyes at the firework-ashes and the Lionel Richie cardboard cutout next to my coffin and pretending I’m still not his mother, I’ll be looking down on you all with a big fat glass of Gin & Tonic saluting and shouting down, “Get this party started bitches!! Tell ‘em about the time when I tripped and went flying over a desk at The Tower of London in front of dignitaries!”