Funeral

Time is running out. We all have to meet our maker at some point, and although I’m fit as a fiddle I like to plan ahead. God has many brands and many names and I want to show up at the right shrine and to use the correct form of address. Technically, I don’t believe in a creator, because my rational mind accepts the agnostic theory. Existence is an attribute of entities that are bound by time and space. God is unbound by time and space, therefore existence is not among his attributes. QED. And yet something in me rejects this logic and yearns to believe – just in case.

I am ‘sharing’ what follows as a public service. Also, as self-care in the hope that publicly shaming myself might stop me from doing it again. What can she be on about, you must be thinking, this time? My name is Rachel Johnson, and I have a chronic inability to leave the house on time, even for something I have been looking forward to for months. One example: heli-skiing in Italy with my son Oliver. All I had to do was catch a flight to Geneva whence we would be conveyed to a divine off-grid chalet via car and driver, then snowmobile. I had one job. To get us to

Q. I am organising a funeral for a close relative and am puzzled that some people wish to attend the wake but not the service of committal at the crematorium. My view is that if you want to enjoy the wake, which will be a good party in a perfect country pub, then you should be willing to pay your respects first. Should I simply not inform these people in advance of the wake venue, since it is usual for this to be revealed only at the funeral on the order of service sheet? – Name and address withheld A. You could reply: ‘We haven’t quite sorted out the wake