There is a saying we have in the UK for someone that is never on time: we say they would be late for their own funeral. This, of course, is an example of the utter silliness of our humour, as the word ‘late’ also means ‘dead’. Well, such a person was my ‘late’ husband, Steve, who had an estranged relationship with punctuality for the whole his life. This used to drive me completely mental, until I realised the way to deal with it was to stop telling him the correct time for appointments, and to always pretend they were an hour earlier.

But, stupidly, I forget to do this for the cremation I have to organise for him in Portugal, and this is a big mistake.

So, picking up from last time…

The whole of the campsite has been woken up to the sound of the ambulance screeching in through the gate, and now everyone is waiting anxiously outside to see what has happened. Ian and Sue, of the Intrepids, are the first through the door once the paramedics leave, and I’ll never forget the look of disbelief on Ian’s face, or the feel of Sue’s arms as she grabs me and holds me tight. It has all happened so fast that I am in shock. Brenda quickly makes me a cup of tea, while John, whose Portuguese is quite good, finds out what he can from the medics as they pack up to go. He tells me that they have called a local funeral service to come and pick up Steve, to take him to the hospital to be seen by the coroner.

While we wait for them to arrive, I feel strangely calm. My predominant emotion is tenderness towards my poor, sweet, love. He is still warm, so I hold his hands until they start to cool, then I put my hand inside his shirt, then under his back, just anywhere the warmth remains. I need to stay touching him for as long as I can. Because none of this is real yet, not in my head, and not in my heart.

After what seems to be a very welcome forever, two young men, Pedro and Jose, turn up with the hearse. They carefully lay Steve in the body bag, and hand Ian a card. Ian tells me that they can see me at their office at 3pm, and I can decide then if I want them to make the arrangements, or if I’d like to find someone else.

I genuinely have no idea. But if the last three years of travelling in Georgie has taught me anything, it is adaptability. In this life, plans are merely guidelines; and unless you can roll with the punches, continuously coming up with creative solutions to the many, many problems and deviations you will encounter, then you’re not gonna succeed. And right now, I don’t know exactly how I’m going to handle the difficulties ahead, but I do know that somehow I’ll find a way.

So, at 3pm, Ian and I head into the village to find Pedro’s office. I’m a little concerned because Moncarapacho is tiny, and I’ve never seen anywhere that looks like a funeral home. But that’s because I’m expecting a large and solemn building, with respectful gold lettering on dignified black, and draped, gauzy curtains backing a window display of tasteful headstones, or vases of lilies.

Pedro’s actual office looks like a minicab waiting room. It has a plain glass window, a small leather sofa with a coffee table in front, and a large desk with a computer on it. There is a glass, display cabinet from Ikea, that houses votive candles and saints, to one side of the filing cabinets, but that’s the only clue. Pedro is wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Ian and I gaze around the sheer unpretentiousness of the tiny room, and smile at each other approvingly.

‘Steve would bloody love this,‘ he says, and I agree.

Pedro, it seems, is the third generation of his family to run this business. His English is pretty good, and he is kind and gentle. He tells me that we have 72 hours to arrange things because that is the law in Portugal. I decide against flying Steve home, because there is no specific place that he’d like to be, and no particular place that I’d like to go and visit his grave either.

I also know he’d prefer to be cremated, because we have discussed this. In fairness, what he’s actually said is that he’d like to be set adrift on a longboat, on some fabulous mountain lake, with about a million mourners lining the banks, and an Elf, preferably Legolas, firing a flaming arrow into the boat and setting him aflame as he drifts into the sunset. I kid you not.

So cremation it is. Pedro tells us that there are very few crematoriums in Portugal, but he’ll make it happen and get in touch when he’s finalised the details. The date is set for Friday morning (today is Wednesday), so now I have to go back to the campsite and start phoning all the family with the terrible news.

Grieving

Everything is surreal. Not just unreal, but full of the unexpected. Everything I thought I knew about grieving and loss turns out to have some holes in the story. I can’t just lie in bed, shielding myself from the world with my duvet, as is depicted in so many movies because, apart from anything else, I’d still have to get up to pee. And anyway, there’s too much to do.

Of course I can’t eat – everything makes me feel sick because of the sucker-punch of heartbreak in my guts. And I can’t sleep for more than an hour or two before waking to his absence, so I cry for another hour or two until exhausted enough to sleep again. I find it easier if I move over to his side of the bed, fitting myself into the space he has left behind.

But the most extraordinary thing also happens, and it’s something that no-one told me about. The only way I can thing to describe it is if you imagine that love is like a rock thrown from a great height into a still, mountain lake. The greater the love, the bigger the rock, and the larger the ripples that wash onto the shore. I experience this ripple effect as being bathed in joy, time and time again, for days. As if he is all around me. And, for each time that the thought of him seems to sever my spine with an ice-pick, there’s another time when I am drenched, again, in his love.

At first I feel guilty to be happy, even if momentarily. But I know, deep down, that it won’t last so I decide to embrace it for as long as I can. It feels for those brief, precious, seconds that I am being allowed to love him back.

The family arrives

My son, Sam, flies in the following day, gets a train down from Lisbon, and I pick him up at Faro. He had been waiting to see what happens with Brexit before renewing his passport, in case he needed to get one of the new blue ones: the one he currently owns runs the day after tomorrow. We will connect with Steve’s brother, Simon, when he gets into Faro this evening, and then with my own brother, Mac, and Steve’s eldest daughter, Rosie, when they fly into Lisbon tomorrow.

Pedro phones me to say the coroner has finished examining Steve, and doesn’t think an autopsy is necessary as the cause of death was fairly obvious. He and Jose have brought Steve back to Moncarapacho, and he’ll be able to pick up the Death Certificate later. I ask if Sam and I can see Steve, and Pedro gives us the address to come to.

Ian drives us down to the ‘Chapel of rest’, which, again, is rather unexpected. It’s a small building on the way into the village, with a bit of a car park area, and no visible windows. Looks like a storeroom, except there is a head height industrial wheelie bin out the back, filled with dead flowers. Pedro lets us in to spend some time with Steve, but explains that he has to leave right away for another funeral.

‘Spend as long as you like,‘ he says. ‘One hour, two hours, is ok. Please to turn off the lights and shut the door when you go.’

The three of us go into a small room with a cross at one end, and chairs around the periphery. Steve is laid on a long table in the middle, covered with a series of what look like lace-edged tablecloths. They have forgotten to put his socks back on. His always wayward hair is sticking up ninety degrees to his head, so I try to stroke it back down. ‘Oh sweetheart,‘ I say. We all survey Steve from different angles and decide that he looks most like the man we knew from the side. So Ian and I leave Sam, kneeling on the floor, to talk privately with his father.

Best laid plans, etc.

Back at the campsite Brenda has been making a floral display to sit on Steve’s coffin. In true life-on-wheels style, she has cut up a water bottle to make a long boat shape for the base, and sourced some florist’s wire and oasis from a local Chinese shop. The flowers have all been collected from around the campsite or down the lane, and include tiny lemons, and sprigs of almond buds and orange blossom. It is beautiful.

They have also booked a minivan from one of the other campers, so they can all drive up to the funeral together. They had been due to leave the campsite today, to start wending their way home, but they refuse to leave until after the funeral, and rebook all their ferries, etc. Their care, and love, and humour are undoubtedly what is keeping me sane.

As Sam and I get ready to go and meet Simon for dinner, I get another call from Pedro. He is embarrassed, apologetic, and furious on my behalf. He says that the Death Certificate is invalid as it has been filled out incorrectly: the coroner has listed Steve as Portuguese and given him an entirely different birth date. It must be re-done. He cannot get it changed in time for Saturday, so now we must wait until Monday to cremate Steve.

Although this inconveniences my family, who have flights booked home again on Sunday, I am not particularly perturbed by this. The last three years of my life have been an endless succession of things being changed at the last minute, and – unlike the UK – this is the sort of thing that happens a lot in other parts of Europe. At it’s best, it is a laid-back attitude to life, which I love. At it’s worst, it is a shitshow of bureaucratic incompetence. No good getting upset over it, it just is.

I calm down Pedro, who is clearly very distressed by this, and ask him if the other funeral went ok. It was his Uncle, he tells me: he was a fisherman, and drowned whilst out at sea. I am horrified. This is what is going on in Pedro’s own life and yet here he is, being concerned for me? I am so touched I don’t know what to say, other than to urge him to get off the phone, NOW, and go and be with his family.

Everyday problems

On Saturday I put Sam on a train to Lisbon, to catch the plane home. He says he is fine with missing the actual funeral, because he has had time to say goodbye to his dad and he feels complete enough. And now I have practical things to deal with.

I swing by Olhao and pick up Simon, and we get gas for the RV, Georgie, and fix the fridge so it stops blowing out and beeping all night. The water heater is another problem: it just stopped working when Steve passed away. I consider the idea that this is Georgie’s version of a broken heart. But now I only have cold water.

I look out the window, and a van pulls up and parks next to the camper opposite. It has English writing on the side which show it to be a camper van mechanic. I ask him to take a look at Georgie when he’s done. Sadly, nothing can fix her today, as she needs a new part. He gives me the number of a mechanic he can recommend when I get back to the UK, but it’ll be cold water all the way until then.

On Sunday I meet up with the rest of the family and I hand out jobs to everyone. Mac and Simon fix my curtains which have pulled off their runners, and this involves lots of tools. I know I have two blinds that have suddenly burst their strings (more heartbreak from Georgie) but those are day-long jobs, so I put that off for another time.

I ask Rosie to cook us all dinner, and leave her in my tiny kitchen, with my king-of-crap stove, and the recipe for Imam Bayildi. Mac and Simon are deployed to help me empty my waste tanks before they bubble up and flood the bath. Nowhere, in any of the films I’ve seen of people grieving, does it involve dealing with a tank full of five-day-old shit and washing up water. When people tell me my life is like a movie, I seriously wonder what kind of films they’ve been watching.

Both Simon and Mac had a lovely time Googling and downloading before they got here, and both have folders full of hopefully helpful stuff. I dump all of Steve’s paperwork in their laps and leave them to it, while I start sorting out music to play for the ceremony tomorrow.

When we made the arrangements with Pedro, he’d asked if we wanted a religious ceremony, which we most certainly did not. So we’d arranged that we could have a side room at the crematorium, for half an hour, and there we could celebrate his life however we liked. I get John to put our choices on his iPad, and sort out a photo montage of pics of Steve to loop during the music. We buy some wine so we can all toast Steve, and Brenda makes sure the floral arrangement is still moist and perky.

My love’s last journey

It is now Monday; three days after Steve’s cremation was supposed to take place. I don’t mind this, as it has given me extra time to think about what I really want to say, and more time with my family and friends. It has, however, interfered with Rosie, Simon and Mac’s flight schedules home again. And in order to change his flight on compassionate grounds, my brother needs to show the airline a copy of the Death Certificate. Which we do not have.

I arrange to meet him at nine o,clock, outside Pedro’s office, who will have the certificate by then. We both arrive promptly, and Pedro phones to say it will be another hour, which is pretty normal in Portugal, but messes with my brother who has to help Simon get his hire car back to Faro. So Plan B is that he can go off and do that, I’ll come back and meet Pedro at ten, take a photo of the certificate and send it to him, and then I’ll meet him and Simon at the crematorium in Setubal later. Simples.

At ten, things actually go to plan. I then ask Pedro if I can see Steve, on my own, for one last time before all the official part of the day gets going. Poor Pedro: I can see he wants to say yes, but there is obviously something else he needs to say, and he can’t find the right words in English to say it. The tactful words. The kind words. In the end he gives up searching and just blurts out:-

‘Let me check first, because we had to turn the fridge off on Saturday night and I want to make sure there is no decomposition.‘

I stand by the big wheelie bin full of flowers and wait, wondering if my life could get any more surreal. Steve, of course, is just how I left him. I smooth down his hair one last time, tell him how much I love him and always will, thank him for every second I got to spend with him, and close the door quietly behind me.

Back at the campsite we change into ‘happy’ clothes, and the Intrepids set off, intending to meet us at the crematorium. Rosie and I wait for the hearse, which pulls into the campsite just after a new couple have arrived, and parks right next to them. I can only imagine what they thought.

Rosie and I talk about her dad all the way up the motorway. We tell funny stories and share lovely memories of him, and we both frequently turn around in our seats to talk to Steve, in the back, in his box. At one point I nearly lose the plot as she asks me if there were any music festivals that her dad had always wanted to go to? He was mad about music, and would download all the latest, obscure, interesting bands almost every week. And I have to admit that, yes, there was a festival that he’d always dreamed of going to – I just don’t know how to tell her on the way to a crematorium. The festival, of course, was Burning Man, and in the end I do the same as Pedro and just blurt it out. I can almost hear Steve laughing his head off at my discomfort.

When we are two-thirds of the way there, we stop for a loo and coffee break at a motorway services. We ask Pedro about Portuguese funerals and he says they are all wailing and screaming and crying. We don’t know if he is impressed or horrified by the way we have been behaving.

While we are discussing how much further we have to go, I learn from Pedro that the crematorium I thought we were going to is not actually the right place at all. The actual venue is about five miles further on. Which is a bugger as everyone else is now heading to the wrong funeral. I quickly phone around and redirect everyone, but struggle to get hold of my brother and Simon. Just as I’m frantically texting him the new address, Mac calls me on the phone.

‘Did you stop for coffee?‘ he says, ‘Only I’m in a car park and I think I’m looking at Steve.‘

Back on the road, and now aware of the new location, it becomes apparent that we are not going to get there on time, however fast we drive. I tap Pedro on the shoulder and check with him that we are definitely going to get our half an hour, aren’t we? He has been making heated phone calls to the crematorium, and there has been a lot of cross -sounding Portuguese wafting back. He promises me that, even if he has to stand guard at the door, no-one will take Mr Steve anywhere until we’ve had our time with him.

The celebration

We are booked in from 2.30 until 3.00, and due to even more roadworks, we swerve into the car park at 2.58. Good to his word, Pedro plants himself outside the door and tells us to take our time. Even though all they had to do was follow us from the pit-stop, Simon and Mac have somehow got lost.

• 

• 

The room we have been given is all white, with high windows that show huge rectangles of an impossibly blue sky. Pedro and Jose have placed Steve in the centre of the room, with pews on either side. They have taken the lid off the coffin, but left the lacy tablecloths covering him in place. During our ‘ceremony’ I frequently place my hands on the cloth covering his, or touch his chest, or whatever else I want. It is intimate, and relaxed, and perfect.

We make one of the pews into a minibar and open some red wine to toast Steve. John and I set up the music on the lid of the coffin, and we begin. As Steve was all about the music, we kick off with a song that Ian and the others had introduced him to at Christmas, and which he’s been playing ever since. He particularly loved the video, with Sir Ian McKellan stealing the show.

Song no.1 is Listen to the man by George Ezra.

Then Simon and Mac turn up, just in time for some number two. This is one that Steve has played me practically every year since we met. It seems particularly apt for life in an RV, celebrating, as it does, a simple life of simple pleasures.

Song no.2 is Our House by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Next I play Steve’s favourite song from his favourite band. There was something about a haunting-voiced female vocalist that he could never resist. As it soars into the space around us, it seems more appropriate than ever. Silently, and agreeing with so many with the lyrics, I tell my Steve that yes, I will wait, and yes, I know in time that we will be together.

Song no.3 is If you wait by London Grammar.

It is now time to say something from the heart, rather than letting the music say it all for me. I read out the last Christmas card I wrote to him, where I expressed everything I felt. He loved the words so much that he hung the card above his driving seat in the RV for a whole year, so he could re-read it whenever he wanted to. When I have finished reading it out, I lift the cloth and tuck it under his hands, above his beloved but broken heart, so that my words can merge and mingle with him, forever.

And then I play a song that is just from me to him. We used to lie in bed at night, trying to find songs that expressed how we felt towards each other, and this was the very last love song I played him.

Song no.4 is A thousand years by Christina Perri.

Rosie steps forwards to say some beautiful words about her dad. She talks about how we are all made of stardust, and how her dad has now gone back to them. She makes a toast, and we drink red wine – his favourite tipple – in honour of him.

The last song is significant in that it reflects Steve’s days as a follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He never went the full cult road, but he would go on weekend meditation courses, buy all the books, and laugh himself silly at the bad jokes that Bhagwan used to tell. And, for a while, he dressed all in red and was called Gaurishankar.

Although this had all just come to an end when I met him, he never lost his love for that time in his life. When roaming around Glastonbury one day, he came across the music of Deva Premal, another acolyte, who sang wonderful sanskrit chants. He was totally charmed, and bought every single one of her records.

It is only fitting, then, to finish with his favourite – a beautiful, haunting, melodious prayer – as we all silently say our goodbyes.

Song no.5 is Hraum Mitray by Deva Premal.

. . . . . . . . . .

Afterwards, I say farewell to the family, who are all going on to Lisbon to catch their respective flights. The Intrepids take me back to the campsite in the minivan, but we stop halfway to watch the sunset, and salute Steve once again. Brenda tells me she finds it interesting that Rosie chose to talk about Steve as stardust, because the previous night they’d all got together and picked out a star in the sky for Steve. She points it out to me, as the dusk starts to darken. ‘We’ll always think of him when we see that,‘ she says, ‘wherever we are.‘

. . . . . . . . . .

Epilogue

Many months later, when I’m visiting my brother’s house, he tells me he’s saved something for me to see on the TV. It is an episode of QI, and Steven Fry has put up an image of something that looks a bit like the Northern Lights. It is a new astral phenomenon, apparently, never before seen. He invites the panel to guess what is it called, and Joe Lycett quips ‘Steve‘.

This turns out to be the right answer!

It started, apparently, as a bit of a joke, based on the Disney film Over the hedge, but the name stuck. It is now official, and stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. So my Steve truly is stardust after all.

Next time: the problem of how to get a 7.5 ton vehicle home to England, when you can’t actually drive the thing.

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