(Apologies that my last post wasn’t working properly: hazard of being both in a hurry for tea, and techno-useless always. Now fixed by Second Youngest – thanks.)

My next awareness of Covid-19’s having an impact on my own life (that is, apart from the extremely virulent ’flu I experienced in January – never before have I spent a whole day in bed, surely – which I jokingly referred to as Coronavirus and now suspect really was) after Rose’s wonderful ten-day school music trip to the Far East was inevitably cancelled in late February, was the day after my father died.

17th March.

I get back from broadcasting Thought for the Day in Cambridge at around breakfast time. Will this prove the last time I ever have to travel to a studio for it? I’ve been campaigning for this for seven years: 62 miles spewed out into the planet for the sake of 2 3/4 minutes… unbelievably, the BBC has proved even more unreconstructed than I am.

My father having died just after I left the evening before. Now laid out upstairs in his room by his loving carers.

I didn’t go in.

When husb was eventually free to be with me, I wished I gone in sooner. So peaceful, he was. His much-loved much-thumbed leather black Bible in his very still hands. (The carers had suggested a flower. Shaun was right: his Bible meant much more to him.) Music – was it Bach? – left playing softly on the radio or somesuch. I could have stayed with his body for a long time.

2nd Y – all work cancelled – kindly went with me, round the corner to the nearest undertaker.

The undertaker was an eejit. Enormous, in morning dress.

Have the funeral as soon as possible, he said. In case there is a lock-down.

Ok, I said. What’s the earliest date we could go for?

Well, what kind of coffin do you want, he said.

What? I really don’t care, I said. What’s the soonest we can have the funeral?

We need to start in the right place, he said. Oak or beech?

Anything you like, I said. Cheapest you’ve got. My father chose lots of music, and we’ll need to organise musicians as soon as possible.

How many cars?

Cars?? The church is just round the corner.

You shouldn’t drive, he said. You may find yourselves more distressed than you expect.

I wouldn’t dream of driving a few hundred yards.

After an hour of this nonsense – Well, this hasn’t quite gone as planned, the undertaker understated – he said the earliest he could arrange a funeral would be in a fortnight’s time.

Shall we find a sensible undertaker, I said to Second Youngest the moment we hit the pavement. My head screaming in frustration.

Do you think any of that might be your fault, he said. You seemed to confuse him a lot.

No, I said.

We did find a sensible undertaker: the next one I tried.

There has been much talk of the distress of death in a time of Corona. Many losses, indeed, sound more than to be borne. Saying goodbye through the crack of a hospital door. Not saying goodbye at all. The worst, a wife told her husband was dying, no one knew when, days, weeks, and she was permitted to visit him once. No more. You choose.

How? Sophie’s choice indeed.

The truth is, for me I suspect my bereavement has been a lot easier than in normal circumstances.

Much of the grief of death, surely, is losing the familiar.

My lesson with him every evening at six thirty. (We finished Οἰδίπους just before Christmas and had recently started – again: I am slow of study – on Ænead VI. Most apt, indeed: the grim and ghastly Chiron and the wretched waiting shades. Thank goodness, on Sunday he asked me to read the glorious Revelation 21 to him, to wipe this drear hopelessness and fill his vision with a shining shore.)

His cheerful carers coming through our kitchen with his laundry.

Popping in to say goodnight and share a whisky with him before bed.

Reading my Thought script after sign-off: he could could no longer hear radio words clearly.

As soon as my father died, everything changed.

All routine gone anyway.

As if the country mourns with me.

Nothing is the same. Why should Daddy still be here?

It has made it easier: much easier.

I have not yet shed one tear. (Not for my father. I still weep for my mother almost every day.)