h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The paperwork. The clothes. The investigation. Paying for the body bag and having your loved one transported to the morgue, and no choice in the matter. The estate. Maybe there was no will. Letters testimentary, death certificates, real property titles, the motor vehicles department, accumulated junk from elementary school. Old photos of who-knows-what. Medical records. Bank accounts. The memorial service.

Everyone gets though it all eventually, but it's like being "it" in blind man's bluff. Each instance is so individual that there is no good way to make a handbook about it, though. Some of the credit card companies were so rude that I vowed never to return--some places were really great; tough times are when you find out what people are REALLY made of.

What can go wrong will. My toilet overflowed the morning of the service. My husband wanted direct cremation and a civil service, his father wanted viewing (for about two minutes) and a religious ceremony, which ended up costing more than ten times the amount it would have been otherwise. Then I found out that his mother no longer believed in God; she cornered my father before the service and chewed him out about it. The "music" his father chose for the ceremony sounded exactly like sound effects you'd hear in a haunted house. Relatives too shocked to be of any help at all will ask for some of the deceased's belongings, as though they are talking to Santa. The floral arrangements that come to the house will be the ones that make you sneeze and give you a headache.

Now is the time you find out what you're really made of, and what they're really made of.