House

In the morning Mary and I went to the crematorium to pick up the ashes. They were in a large-ish brown plastic urn. The lady unscrewed the lid and took out a little plastic bag containing some paperwork which we had to sign and then we put the urn in a bag and carried it out. Weird feeling, though walking over to mum's bouquet of flowers, still looking very fresh and glistening with dew, was weirder. We thought for a moment about bringing them back home and pressing some of them, but changed our minds.    

The rest of the day was spent going through mum's stuff: hundreds & hundreds of books, grandad's paintings, blue & white china... All relatively straight-forward. We chose what we wanted to keep and took a lot of the remainder to Oxfam. You hear of squabbles on these kind of occasions but we weren't expecting any, nor were there.

Over lunch & dinner we talked about the house. Liz and I are seriously thinking about (horrible term) 'buying out' my siblings and keeping it on. It would be very tight financially but aside from the emotional attraction, it would make sense, even if we wouldn't live there in the short term at least - if we can make the sums work. Everyone being very supportive of the idea.