One of the things I’ve needed to do is to sort out and dispose of Christopher’s clothes. That’s a really tough job, so I’ve been taking it slowly and doing it just one shelf/drawer at a time. I’ve been sorting the clothes into a number of categories, each of which I’m dealing with separately: Clothes [...]
I’ve been lent a book by Kubler-Ross and Kessler called “On Grief and Grieving” which is apparently one of the standard texts in Bereavement Counselling. Their basic thesis is that there are five stages of grief Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance Apparently people are expected to go through all five stages of grief so that [...]
Chris didn’t come from the sort of family who had £43M Chinese vases sitting on the bookcase, but he did have a few things belonging to his grandmothers which he strongly believed should be kept in the family. Indeed, he explicitly left them to his sister in his Will. So today I met up with [...]
Christopher’s tax affairs really ought to be straight forward. There is no inheritance tax to pay, as he left almost everything to me. If anything, he should be due a small income tax rebate for this current tax year – the pittance of interest earned on his savings was well below the tax threshold, but [...]
Chris was a keen archer when I first met him. He had shot for his University and was a member of the local archery club. Although his interest waned in recent years he still had all of his archery equipment, which in its day was good-quality stuff. His Will was really very simple, leaving almost [...]
I’m handling most of the probate myself, but there is one bit I’m more comfortable getting professional help on. That’s getting the house moved into my sole name – we bought it as “tenants in common” which means it doesn’t automatically come to me, rather the ownership gets transferred in accordance with his Will. So [...]
The Consumer’s Association (Which?) publishes a useful book called “What to do when someone dies“. I’ve had it on my Amazon wish list since January – how sad is that? They update it every year with the latest tax regime etc, so I didn’t want to buy it immediately after Chris was diagnosed, in the [...]
The blood donation nurses visited work today for their regular donor session in our conference room. I went along as usual to give blood, but it felt much more poignant this time. I couldn’t help remembering how much better Chris felt after his two blood transfusions. Each one gave him so much more energy – [...]
I blogged a few weeks ago about donating our little Polo to charity via giveacar.co.uk. At the time, I expressed doubts as to whether it was all too good to be true. So I thought it only fair that I update the blog to say that it’s all worked very smoothly. I phoned giveacar on [...]
Somehow, applying for probate seems like a huge step to take – though a very necessary one if I ever want to be able to access Christopher’s savings. The probate office of HMRC were very helpful and sent me all the forms straightaway back in August. But I found the forms surprisingly intimidating and kept [...]
