The dreaded death certificate

Daddy Blackbird #10

Steve in formal wear as he attended a family wedding

Along with the abundance of condolence cards I received, as the days went on, I was discovering the extent of the ‘admin’ required when somebody dies so suddenly.

To help ease the load, my friend Emma started to make a few calls to notify utilities and she would relay their questions to me, fielding and filtering them so I didn’t have to be involved in everything, yet knowing that I would want to have a say.

There’s no predetermined process for this stuff so we just tried our best under the circumstances, working it out together as we went along.

It quickly became clear that we couldn’t achieve much without a death certificate, so we made the necessary telephone appointment to get this in motion.

We were told that a death is usually registered within five days and that relatives are then issued with the certificate. However, when it comes to a suicide, the process is delayed, so we had to ask the coroner for an interim certificate.

A final and formal death certificate could not be issued until after the inquest, when the verdict was legally recorded, so we would be given a few copies of the interim one to enable the necessary notifications to be made in the meantime. They would be posted out to us in a few days.

I was very clear: I did not want them in my house or anywhere near me. After everything that had happened in those cold, dark days my brain was overloaded, at bursting point, flooded with far too much grim information.

I didn’t know which way was up and a large part of me was still in denial, still wondering if this was just a bad dream or a sick joke, still not quite sure whether some new information would come to light to tell us that they’d made a mistake, or that he was actually in some secret crime ring and had been murdered by the gang to silence him.

My mind was still reaching out to every possible place, desperately searching for some sort of sense.

Anything but this…