When I’m deeply invested in things going a certain way, like at my mum’s funeral, and they don’t, there is a particular kind of agony left to deal with.

It was a nice enough service. Very no fuss, which in all fairness is probably what my mum would have wanted. She was a remarkably stoic, no fuss woman. She didn’t get upset when things didn’t work out perfectly. Her tagline was ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She didn’t want anyone to feel bad or get upset about things. The flipside is that she couldn’t understand when people such as myself were left hurting about things that she simply wouldn’t worry about. In this context, I’m trying to take that as a positive.

The main reason for my upset is that I choose the music which consisted of three songs, one for the beginning of the service, one in the middle, and one at the end as the coffin was taken out. The first two songs played perfectly (from a cd). The third one, my favourite and the one I really wanted to be played as the lyrics were exactly how I felt about my mum, did not; instead, the first one played again (which my mum deeply loved and used to use as an alarm clock on her Alexa). I don’t know what went wrong. I am totally sure I checked that all three songs came out. I downloaded them from a file converter and the names were there. The vicar may have accidently re-played the first one. We may never know and it doesn’t change anything now anyway. I’m just left with a deep sadness over it because I wanted everything to be perfect. No one else is upset or bothered. My sister said that mum clearly didn’t want that one played because she preferred the first one!

That wasn’t the only problem. Her middle name was carved out wrong on her coffin. My sister, ever the practical one, said that no one will see it as it’s underground anyway. And again, my mum would be likely to laugh and say ‘It doesn’t matter.’ There were a few other issues which I won’t mention but in the same kind of vein. My sister is happy with how the service went. I wish it had been different. There was little money (although more in the end than I’d realised) and we needed it to be basic, but it felt a bit too basic. I wanted it to be more special for her. I think my sister, being so exhausted after the nightmare of the last few months, wanted it over with.

Now I feel worse than I did before. Someone told me that the funeral rarely feels enough when someone has died. It’s like….now what? That person lived, they meant so much to so many people, and now they’re gone. The funeral was never going to be enough to mark the fact that my mum lived. And while I believe my mum’s spirit lives on, I’m feeling a primal need to go to the cemetery and tell her I’m sorry the songs didn’t work out and that it wasn’t what I wanted for her. I feel as though I need her reassurance that she isn’t upset or disappointed or feeling let down. I do realise that this is about the relationship with my mum and where I’m at emotionally, rather than truly thinking she’d be upset with me beyond the grave.

It’s hard when things go to plan because it has a tendency to bring out the child part of my nature who wants to cry and scream and shout ‘I wanted it THAT way’ and ultimately be comforted in all my distress by Mother who says ‘It’s okay, it’s all okay.’ Conversely, I wanted to make it okay for HER, so I’d have her acceptance. I have to function without that ‘okay’ from her and find it within me, in my very being, in the spirit of acceptance that underlies the fabric of all life (and death). It’s one song that didn’t play, it’s not the end of the world, but it hurts that I couldn’t honour my mother in the way I wanted. I have to hold that hurt and grief within me and find the larger space within which they can be held and accepted until they naturally dissipate over time.

Incidentally, one odd (and rather nice) thing happened: When I got back into the car after I left the committal service at the cemetery, what should come on the radio but the piece of music that I choose for the end of my DAD’s funeral 8 years ago! Coincidence or not? Who knows… I like to think it was a sign from him. In any case, I felt a moment of comfort.