A guide to what happens administratively when someone dies: Day 1
Sunday, October 10th, 2010 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizziecWarning, this could be triggering to some, so I'm going to put it under a cut. It's basically a discription of what happens, or what you have to do in terms of organisation and administration when someone close to you dies. This is based on what happened when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
no1typo died, so YMMV.
Mum died while Phil and I were at home getting some sleep (entry here on LJ). The hospital or in this case specifically Fiona the Brilliant MacMillan Nurse, called us literally minutes after it happened and told us that mum had gone. She asked if we were coming in, and we decided to, so that we could see her and say goodbye.
While we were travelling in they cleaned mum up. When we got to the hospital Fiona saw us in her office to explain what had happened when she died and what the next steps would be as far as the hospital were concerned. Then she invited us to view the body. When we saw mum about an hour after she died she was clean and neat. She was still in her bed in her side room at this point. I don't know what the procedure would have been if she had died in the ward. At this point she still had the tubes and things that had been in and on her when she died. We were told we couuld spend as much, or as little time with her as we wanted to.
For example, Phil saw mum from the doorway and that was enough for him and he was taken and looked after. Pat and I went into the room and looked at mum from the foot of the bed. We were told we could touch her if we wanted to, though Pat and I chose not to. We stayed in the room for about 10 minutes, but we could have stayed for longer.
After the hospital we went home. We had been told that we could have the paperwork we need the day after mum died, because they couldn't get it ready for the same day. This meant that we couldn't do much more that day. I seem to recall that we used that day to get a coiple of quotes from funeral directors so we had some idea of how much the funeral would cost and from where. We also went through some of mum's stuff looking for paperwork. This isn't essential though, so don't worry if you don't feel up to it. We did it because I got an organising zeal - but everyone is different.
We also made lots of phone calls to friends, family and mum's work to tell them that she had died. I made notes of what had happened before I made the calls, which is good because on the phone I often forgot what I wanted to tell people, or I got emotional, and in both cases the list helped.
no1typo died, so YMMV.Mum died while Phil and I were at home getting some sleep (entry here on LJ). The hospital or in this case specifically Fiona the Brilliant MacMillan Nurse, called us literally minutes after it happened and told us that mum had gone. She asked if we were coming in, and we decided to, so that we could see her and say goodbye.
While we were travelling in they cleaned mum up. When we got to the hospital Fiona saw us in her office to explain what had happened when she died and what the next steps would be as far as the hospital were concerned. Then she invited us to view the body. When we saw mum about an hour after she died she was clean and neat. She was still in her bed in her side room at this point. I don't know what the procedure would have been if she had died in the ward. At this point she still had the tubes and things that had been in and on her when she died. We were told we couuld spend as much, or as little time with her as we wanted to.
For example, Phil saw mum from the doorway and that was enough for him and he was taken and looked after. Pat and I went into the room and looked at mum from the foot of the bed. We were told we could touch her if we wanted to, though Pat and I chose not to. We stayed in the room for about 10 minutes, but we could have stayed for longer.
After the hospital we went home. We had been told that we could have the paperwork we need the day after mum died, because they couldn't get it ready for the same day. This meant that we couldn't do much more that day. I seem to recall that we used that day to get a coiple of quotes from funeral directors so we had some idea of how much the funeral would cost and from where. We also went through some of mum's stuff looking for paperwork. This isn't essential though, so don't worry if you don't feel up to it. We did it because I got an organising zeal - but everyone is different.
We also made lots of phone calls to friends, family and mum's work to tell them that she had died. I made notes of what had happened before I made the calls, which is good because on the phone I often forgot what I wanted to tell people, or I got emotional, and in both cases the list helped.
