I’ve spent the last 12 months wanting to write something about how I felt after my Dad died.  Unfortunately this is the best I can come up with.

There are proven to be five very distinct stages of grief.  And whilst I can identify with all of them (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) I would also like to propose my own:

1: Admin.  At a time when all you really feel like doing is hiding under the duvet there is So. Much. To. Do.  You can barely find the energy to brush your hair but you have to be places and talk to people and swallow their sympathy and their terrible coffee. Getting the death certificate, registering the death, telling everyone, writing the obituary for the newspaper, appointing and meeting the funeral director, meeting a vicar (he talked a lot), arranging the funeral, arranging the wake, going to the printers, cancelling things.  I was miffed that the funeral director had Donnay sports socks on and I wondered if you were meant to dress up to meet a vicar? My Mum agonised at length about the amount of sandwiches we would need.

(On a serious note if you ever have to navigate this minefield then the government’s ‘tell us once’ service is brilliant.)

2: Coffee.  It becomes your lifeblood.  That is until it is an acceptable time to open some wine.  Which you find yourself doing most evenings.

3: Rom Coms.  The wine (see above) makes them acceptable.  They seem like a good way to pass the time until you forget Amy Schumer’s Dad dies in ‘Trainwreck’ and you wish you’d watched something else.  Reliable sob-fest ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ leaves you unmoved, however.

4: 5am ironing.  Thankfully this was a one off incident.  And it was only one pair of trousers, in my defence.

5: Rash purchases.  I bought what I still call ‘my grief chair’.  It’s a very nice chair but I wouldn’t normally rush into buying anything like that.  But on that Sunday afternoon I convinced myself it was exactly what I needed.  It is a very nice chair (I’m looking at it now).