Carly likes to be prepared and in control. She knows that usually, but not always, you can’t be in control of your own death. So, she tries to live life to the fullest, just in case. It might be one day that she does travel to Dignitas when she is older and greyer to end it all. But not yet. However, it is still important to, at least, make some contingency plans. Once her children all turned 18, she completed those nifty government ‘Lasting Power of Attorney forms’ for both health and wealth. However, she kept mucking one of them up because she made assumptions. She thought the forms would be identical and, in her haste, she kept clicking on and on without really paying much attention to what information they requested. On, Carly went, clicking here and there to get the forms finished as quickly as was humanly possible. So, she had to pay twice for one of them. Silly Carly. Will she ever learn?
She has also done her will. That means the right people (her children) would get hold of her assets. Of course, the amount depends on how frugal she is (not very) and how long she lives for (hopefully a long time, but certainly not for ever). Her son, Haz, who works in the finance sector, has to regularly check that Carly isn’t blowing her stash too quickly and making unwise investments. But Carly can be a bit frivolous and prone to clicking too fast on Amazon for things she neither needs nor can afford. Recently she nearly invested in an £5,000 electrical sun and rain awning for her garden. “It’s a rental, Mum” sighed her (sensible-but-not-always) daughter Boo. Instead, she bought a tarpaulin for £10 to go over the outside seating cushions. Carly was surprised that Boo didn’t petition for some of the £4,990 savings made. It was interesting, mused Carly, that you could underestimate people and their motives sometimes.
For a long time, Carly had a tricky relationship with death. Funerals more so. But death, nonetheless. Even though she had to dissect a cadaver as a 19-year-old medical student. And once qualified she spent years certifying patients who had died in hospital. She knew you could tell by looking at the people if they were about to expire. Near the end, their mouth would be open (’o sign’) but when they had popped off their mortal coil, their tongue would slip to one side (‘q sign’). Sometimes she even earnt ‘Ash Cash’. This meant filling in a secondary form to verify someone had died of natural causes and no foul play was at work. If a person was to be cremated and turned into ash, then their body couldn’t be exhumed, so that no further checks could be carried out.
Carly had learnt a lot about cremations from her latest boyfriend, David, a crematorium assistant. He showed her proudly around his workplace and explained things in meticulous detail. They came up with a scheme that might have some business clout. Carly’s brother had told them about ‘Digger-Land’ where children would ride around with operatives on old and defunct tractors. David wondered if there was any scope for ‘Crem-World’? Probably not. Besides being rather morbid, the whole process was pretty automated. And it certainly explained why David was pretty useless when it came to lighting fires in shepherds’ huts.
At funerals, Carly does get rather overwhelmed. Gosh does she cry. She sheds more tears than any other mourners. To the point of embarrassment. So mostly she avoids them. And this has been the catapult for her to organise her own funeral. At least she won’t cry but she can still be the centre of attention and that feels good. She could suggest someone reads some of her poems. They could even read out this Carly Story. And she could recommend some music that she likes. Will she be there to enjoy it? Maybe? She isn’t sure. Anyway, the music will feature her favourite instruments – the violin and cello. She thinks these are her all-time favourites pieces of music; Bruch’s ‘Kol Nidre’, Karl Jenkins ‘Adagio’ and Hannah Sennesh’s ‘Ayli Ayli’. She would like her children to play for her at her funeral. They wouldn’t play at her 50th birthday party, so, it is unlikely she can enforce this from the grave, and it seems too transactional to write them out of the will if they refuse. But she really would like to hear them playing the oboe and bassoon which are the woodwind double reed versions of the violin and cello respectively.
Carly was recently quite surprised that Ades still expected her to be buried next to him. That isn’t the usual scenario when you get divorced. This leaves Carly open to consider where she would like to be buried. Highgate Cemetery is pretty cool. Full of famous people and infamous comrades. But probably quite pricey. It is cheaper if you get cremated and then only need a small space for your ashes and a miniscule gravestone. But cremation is against her environmental principles, as so much energy is needed to cremate one person. Much better is to rot over time. She wonders how many years it will take if she wears natural fibres and is in a compostable coffin?
Recently she started a new ceremony. For the Jewish New Year. A new beginning. She created three beautiful fern-inspired paper cut-outs on different papers sewn together. This was a new craft for her, and it was fun wielding a sharp scalpel when creating them. She took them with her on the Purple-Ox trail. During her hike she stopped to burn one of them. This was to symbolise casting off what she no longer wanted. She also left another one there to decay over time. She liked the idea of something disintegrating slowly. And she brought one back. And this clarified things for Carly. Yes. She will go for burial in the end, for the end.
She recently learnt from her good friend and fellow knitter that it is perfectly possible to knit your own coffin. Carly cannot seem to find any patterns online but maybe she isn’t looking in the right place. Surely there is a free download on Ravelry? And, of course, it must be purple. An abiding obsession and passion. And it should be made in a spiral. Crochet may be more suitable, thinks Carly. Anyway, who needs a pattern? It should be a bit like making a top-down jumper where you can keep on changing the dimensions, so in the end, the finished item fits like a glove. As long as she doesn’t get enormously fat between making the coffin and needing to use it.
She probably also needs to consider how it will be stored. You really don’t want to see your coffin every day because it is large, and your home is small. You could even trip over it. Maybe it could be filled with linens and so it would have the intermediate use of being a storage trunk? But if it is to be stored flat like a piece of Ikea furniture, Carly will have to type instructions for how it is to be assembled when needed.
And she’d like to be buried in a woodland with lots of bluebells which are really actually a version of purple. And her gravestone will say (NOT IN SHOUTY CAPITALS or annoying underlining).
Here lies Carly
Mother to Haz, Tobes and Boo
Lover of
cats, yarn, coffee, purple, spirals, and prime numbers
and none of the RIP – rest in peace. That’s not Carly. She’ll be making a right old noise in her next life…
But for now, she is off to investigate further and plan better.
In a death café meeting.
Oh yes. They do exist.
In Hackney (obvs)…
