Bereavement due to suicide

The funeral was arranged for a fortnight and a day after his death and that was horrendous.

Did you plan that with the children?

Yes. It was all planned with the children, the hymns everything. We didn’t have many believe me. It was a very, very short service, primarily because I knew I would fall apart completely. And ironically I was the one that didn’t. That, that was very, very strange and I am quite an emotional person anyway and I really thought I would fall apart completely. My best friend took me and the two youngest boys and a friend of the middle son. The others went independently. My daughter came with her fiancé and my eldest son came with his girlfriend. They arrived independently. We got to the crematorium and we waited and waited and waited and the place filled up and the hearse was late, got caught in traffic. Nobody else did but the hearse did and I remember saying to the undertaker; he said, ‘I’m really sorry we got caught up in traffic so we’re late’. And I said, ‘Graham would have hated to have been late’.

It was, as I said, a very short service. Our vicar was really, really choked. He was a personal friend as well. He was very choked. He did an address. He came with a prepared address and didn’t use it. He just spoke. My best friend stood between, stood beside my youngest son who was beside me and my children and their friends were in the front row. And I remember saying to my best friend, “If anything happens with the youngest, if he kicks off just take him out”. I knew she would do that, just take him out. He sobbed the entire time, the whole funeral. My middle son stood beside me holding my hand and crying his eyes out. My daughter was tucked up in her fiancés arms weeping buckets and my eldest son just stood holding his girlfriend’s hand and the tears just fell out of his face. He wasn’t even crying. It just fell out of his face. And I just stood there and thought, “This is totally unreal. I wonder what I am doing here? All these people.” It, it felt exactly as if I was in some sort of a play where I had to do this particular, play this particular role and there was no room for emotion or anything like that.

Did you feel you were having to support them all the time?

I don’t, I don’t even remember thinking about them at the time. It was awful.  While we were waiting for the hearse to come and the youngest kept disappearing and I remember I kept saying you know, “Where is he, where is he?” Because I was so worried that he would disappear somewhere. He didn’t of course but….  And afterwards going outside and there were all of these people just wanting to shake my hand and say how sorry they were. And the headmaster had come from the youngest one’s school and there were so, so many people there who loved him. And I still didn’t feel it was real. It was about six months later when I suddenly thought I really, really need to go to Graham’s funeral. And that was a really odd day because it was, you know, it was right out of nowhere. What on earth would I want to revisit a funeral for? But I was suddenly very aware that I hadn’t actually been there. I had in myself but spiritually, mentally, whatever I was totally removed from it. I was the only person who didn’t cry and I knew that I would fall apart. I was absolutely certain I’d be a sobbing wreck and that people would be shovelling me up afterwards and [laugh] putting me back in the car and it wasn’t like that at all.

So yes, that was the Thursday, and I went up with my two brothers. Yes it was a lovely day, I mean the whole time was a lovely day, blue skies now always remind me of that day you know.

But the funeral, a lot of people had inputs, I mean the vicar was fantastic, because he had been through the whole thing many times before and knows what works and what doesn’t work, and it is, you know, it is a performance, it is choreographed, you know, it isn’t something that’s spontaneous. And in fact often spontaneous things don’t work very well.  It was all quite managed in terms of you know what’s going to happen when, and who’s going to do what, and it just looked, otherwise it just looks a mess if people don’t, you know, know who’s talking now, they want to know and be very clear, and we thought a lot about the music, and how we were going to come in, and what music was going to be playing then, and one of the really nice things was actually we had a photograph of Gill, using a data projector, projected on to the wall in the church and I know everybody said they really felt that Gill was there.

I mean the church was packed, and there must’ve been 300 people in the church, there were people out the back of the church because they couldn’t fit in it you know. I mean again we’d been to the church with the children.  I’d walked through how it was going to be, you know the day before I’d walked through, said well you know this is what’s going to happen, and the coffin’s going to draw up and well they’re going to carry it in, and then we’re going to walk behind,  and this is where we’re going to sit, and…, you knowso there were no surprises for them, and of course it’s, you know you can’t prepare them, you can’t really prepare for it at all can you? But you know, as far as was possible. 

And was she buried in the churchyard?

Yes, we, I didn’t want her cremated, I didn’t want her cremated for two reasons really, one was, I don’t know, just I felt  for the children just seeing her, I don’t know, just seeing her coffin being buried.  I’ll tell you this funny story about that actually it was, no matter what you do to prepare, no matter what you do to prepare, you still don’t know how children see things anyway so,  yes, but the second reason was because we then would have, because of where we are in the countryside, the nearest crematorium is at least 45 minutes away, so by the time you’ve got everyone there who’s going to go, it’s at least an hour there, and then you know, at least two, two and half hours and the whole thing will have just sort of dissolved. So we really didn’t want to do that, so it was very much, you know, do the funeral service and then bury Gill and then have, I hate the word  ‘wake’, I call it a ‘funeral party’, and we had a funeral party for everybody and then we had all the sort of close friends and family come round to the house, and we had literally we had a party, and  I’d told everybody not to come in black, I hate black anyway, I just think well it’s, I hate, I don’t want to be wearing black at my funeral, I know I’m wearing a black shirt now, you know,  but anyway I wanted sort of, and I knew Gill would’ve wanted it, just to come in your best sort of summer dress,  yeah I wanted it to be bright and sort of you know, a real sort of like celebration of Gill, and of course it was sort of desperately sad but she touched a lot of people, and it just made it a wonderful day, you know I think it was, it was just,  you know people said the party, because we used to have lots of parties up in London, a number of people said,  “There’s only one thing missing at this party”,

 Gill. And the children will remember that there was a bright side to it.

You know, I mean, I think you know, the celebration of it, I think it will be important for them, you don’t know do you? I mean ask them in fifteen years time, you know twenty years time, it would be interesting to know, I hope so, I mean I hope so, I think, just thinking of the good that might come out of it, you know she was obviously, you know she was very popular, she was really well loved, she was a beautiful woman and had really, really touched a lot of people’s lives, you know, given by the number of people that were there.

But the funny story about the coffin was the next day we had a few friends staying over obviously because they’d come from quite a long way and, we were just sitting around the breakfast table and you know you think you’ve covered every base, from the children’s point of view this is, and I can’t now remember whether it was Phoebe or Izzy that said it, I have a feeling it was,  I have a feeling it was Izzy, and said, it was something like, what was it? It was, it was something like, “Well where’s Mummy now then?” [Laughs] It was, we just looked at each other, and it was like sort of, “Mummy was in the coffin.” But of course the, so you can’t, you’ve gone through this whole ritual, “Oh, for Christ sake, we’ve been through the whole…”, you know hadn’t thought to say to them, that because of course we visited her at the chapel of rest, the lid of the coffin was off, and now the lid of the coffin’s on, presumably they were expecting the lid of the coffin to be off because why wouldn’t there, because it was off at the chapel of rest. So we just sort of, put this, buried this box in the ground, and I mean it just wouldn’t occur to you would it? It just wouldn’t occur to you to sort of think that so. So that was a fun, it was a, it was a lovely day. It was a really lovely day.

He [my husband] chose the clothes. He chose the jewelry. He chose the sentimental bits that our son had. I did nothing of that, I left it completely to my husband. It was his way of doing it and he never regrets that. And it’s so important, so important.

Yes. And how long was the funeral after, how many days after…

Because it was an inquest, because of it happening at home, and because of the severity of it, it was nearly three weeks. But the funeral directors were the most wonderful people. We didn’t want a grand affair, we didn’t want any cars. We didn’t want anybody in black. We didn’t want the people, the mourners in dark clothes. We wanted them all to come in ordinary clothes and that was one thing that got my husband through it because there was a lot of planning to do. Whatever he wanted to do I let him do and let him, there was certain things he couldn’t do so I would take over with the help of friends again. My parents just couldn’t cope with any of it, they were really bad but being so busy, and I made myself so busy for those three weeks.

The funeral was just beautiful, it was again so important that the way we’d done it, the way we didn’t have to have all this, what I call very rigid rules and harshness, it was so lovely to do it and everybody came in bright clothes. There was yellows and oranges and greens and it was beautiful. The church was just, no expense was spared on the flowers and again it is so important, it’s important to us and I hope that anybody else listening to this could really be inspired by the beauty of the flowers. It really does help.

And I think you told me that you decided not to have a funeral.

That’s right, yes. He, he, we gave power of attorney to Dignitas and they dealt with his body and cremated him. And my brother has his ashes in the south of France. And he hasn’t decided what to do with them yet. And my mother didn’t want them because, you know, ashes don’t mean anything. We’re not a hugely sentimental family.

How was, how was that decision made though? I mean was, was that something that was your father’s wish or that you made.

No, we made at the time as we were with Dignitas and before he’d taken the potion. We discussed it. They asked us. We sort of went, “Oh, oh, you know, oh, well.” Mum just went, you know, “Ashes.” She just went, “I don’t want them.” So my brother said, “Oh, well, I’ll have them then.”

And did, did you get the impression that they, they expect people to have funerals?

No, no, they have the, they ask you, you know, and it’s up to you. And they didn’t say to us that other people did one thing or another. There was no, it’s, “What do you want to do?” It’s totally about the family they have with them. Fantastic people, compassionate, helpful, dignified.