Today saw us make significant progress towards sorting out our father’s funeral and his estate. My brother and I booked the venue for the post-funeral wake, visited my father’s solicitor and collected his will, ordered the flowers for the funeral, and visited two banks to notify them of our father’s death.

We also managed to visit the Registrar in order to make an appointment tomorrow afternoon so that we could register our father’s death. Once that is done we can go back to the banks to begin the process of winding up our father’s affairs. All that will then remain to do is to send out funeral notices to family and friends, finalise the details of the funeral, print the Order of Service for the funeral, and apply for probate … if it is necessary.

Then we can relax … until the day of the funeral.

I think that it is Murphy’s Law that states that ‘if something can go wrong, it will do‘ … and today has been a fine example of this.

I was wondering why the previously helpful Coroner’s Office was not answering their telephones this morning … when they telephoned me … and apologised for the problems I might have had contacting them. It transpired that late yesterday the entire computer system in the Coroner’s Office had stopped working, and that this had knocked out the telephones as well. They had only just got the system back online at about 10.15am, and were trying to make up for lost time.

They now had the results of the post mortem, and a certificate of death has been issued and will be posted to the Registrar later today. With luck my brother and I will be able to register my father’s death on Thursday, and then we can begin to sort out his funeral and his estate.

I am growing more and more frustrated with the bureaucracy one has to deal with when someone dies.

Last Friday my brother and I had all sorts of problems even contacting the Bereavement Office at Queens Hospital, Romford, and when we finally made it through the hospital’s security system they were singularly unhelpful … and very unsympathetic.

We were eventually informed that because the cause of my father’s death was ‘unknown’, the Coroner would have to determine the actual cause of death. This might require a post mortem examination, which we were told would be done on Monday. I was assured – by the Coroner’s Officer I spoke to – that the results should be available on Monday, and that I would be informed of them that afternoon by telephone.

I was not.

I have been trying to contact the Coroner’s Office since 8.00am this morning … but when I get through to the number I have been given, all I hear is a recorded message that tells me that they are very busy, and that I should call back later. More than two hours later … and after more than twenty attempts … I am still trying to find out what the results of the post mortem are. Until the Coroner determines the cause of death, my family and I cannot register the death or begin any of the definite arrangements for my father’s funeral.

It is all very frustrating.