…we had music, and we had hymns and we had readings, people did readings. And at the crematorium, he was cremated he’s not buried, at the crematorium we had one of his favourite songs played.

And then are his ashes there? Or did you take them somewhere else?

His ashes are at my Mum’s, still, to this day. I think I’d like them buried now, but I think my Mum just wants to keep them there. I think because when somebody’s took so suddenly, there’s no warning and there’s no closure, it’s very difficult to then remove the body and I don’t know how I’d feel. I think my Mum feels better knowing that he’s in her house.

And her ashes scattered or were they buried?

No they’re buried and they’re buried in a (place name) cemetery. And I go there at least twice a year. And that’s on the anniversary of her death, on the 29th of April, and I normally go on Christmas Eve every year as well. And other times if I’m in (place name), I normally make the effort to go and stand there for a few minutes and a have a quick chat.

Is there anything to mark the place where she’s buried

There is indeed, yes, she’s got a headstone. She had her own headstone temporary one, because it’s a family plot. She’s now on the list of people who are there as well.

And I go see her and quite often I go just as a funny enough the cemetery is, is quite a big one. And on the way out, right on the corner is a tiny pub and I always go in there for a very small glass of wine and raise it to her memory.

And then after the funeral was your son buried or cremated?

He was cremated, and that was you know okay, and we
What happened to his ashes?

His ashes were buried in the garden here, so that’s one reason why we were very keen not to move house. So that was very comforting for us, to do that.

Did you have a ceremony for that?

We had a ceremony for that, and the, the, the college chaplain who supported us all along came and did that. We don’t have it, a marked place, but it’s in the garden. We have a bench in Wytham Woods which is in memory of him, which is very near to where he did his research because he did in research work in Wytham Woods and the university kindly agreed that we should have a bench and that’s very nice to have that so we have somewhere we can go to and a lot of our friends say how lovely it is to have that, that bench there. And so on, and feel that’s a very useful and practical thing, they can sit on it when they feel tired, and we think that’s very, oh that’s very nice, and it gives us a very good reason to go and see the place that he worked, and one of the people at his funeral said how, you know, whenever they’d seen Adrian in Wytham Woods he always seemed to be on his hands and knees. This was because he was actually doing research which was concerned with counting seeds, his doctorate was related to the affect of sheep grazing on what grows on the herbivory. And it’s very interesting that you know how many sheep you have on a bit of land makes an enormous difference to what grows there, and it’s of particular concern because in some parts of the country, in rural Wales for example, where he’d also done some research where too many sheep can result in growth of lots of thistles and little else.

Was it difficult arranging to take his ashes to Italy?

Well the police were involved with arranging, helping us to arrange [it]. I remember we had to wait to get Jon’s ashes back from the crematorium, and when we went, and one of the things I remember really, really clearly was when we went to get Jon’s ashes you walk into this little room and there’s a shelf, or, this is what I remember, there was a shelf and different boxes on it, and sort of he’s lifted off a shelf and given to you, you know? And it’s almost like, Oh my God, here’s my husband in a box And we had to have Jon’s, because Jon was going over, Jon’s ashes were going overseas, he had to be sealed. The casket had to be sealed at the Italian Consulate, and have a certificate to say he was in there.

So my Dad had to take Jon’s ashes with the police, it was New Year’s Day actually, New Year’s Eve? New Year’s Eve he had to go to the Italian Consulate with a police officer, and they brought him back with a red seal on. But even though we had that, it was still; so if you can imagine what I said to you about not wanting to, I wanted to be with Jon, once I’d got his casket back I wouldn’t let it go, so I used to sleep with him and everything, and when we went to the airport to fly out the security, you know the security, going through security they wanted to take Jon’s ashes off me and put him through the X-ray machine, and I wouldn’t let them.

So even though we’d gone through the ritual and got all the paperwork that we needed, you know I was still faced with somebody wanting to take him off me and put him through the X-ray machine and I did refuse point blank, and they didn’t in the end. But I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have let them do it. And then when we got on the flight, my Dad had to say to the air hostess, I don’t know what words he used, but I wasn’t going to put Jon in the overhead locker. And I remember eating my dinner off him on the flight. It was New Year’s Day, we flew out New Year’s Day and they were playing Jingle Bells, I had Jon on my lap and I was eating my aeroplane meal off him.

I would not let him go basically, you know, until we scattered his ashes.

Did you have a memorial for him?

No. Somebody said to me a while after, well we scattered his, scattered his ashes in Italy by a tree, so I, I, there’s a tree, there’s a big oak tree in the middle of a Tuscan field that’s completely on it’s own, so that’s his memorial I suppose, but nothing with his name on it.

We arranged for his body to be shipped back to Ireland, and we buried him in the family graveyard which was, all of that was a positive, having been through a lot of negatives, you know, we had him back. He could be buried amongst his family, I think his Grandfather said that he was the, something like the seventh or eighth in a line, who were buried in that graveyard from the middle of the nineteenth century, and we have a very, we now have a very nice granite tombstone I guess you call it, which was contributed by his Godfather who is from County Cork, and it has a lovely inscription on it which he actually stated at the memorial service was, There was a smile that brings us roses in December, well they’re quite common now, roses in December, but it, it it’s the kind, it’s a lovely phrase, and that is on his, that is on his gravestone, and we attend the grave. And every time I go to Ireland which is probably every two or three months, I wouldn’t go without going to see, to go to visit the gravestone. And actually there’s a, a, in a little village nearby there’s a most wonderful a little pub, that’s a sort of hole in the wall, just the sort of place that Ed would like, and one sort of feels that he might slip out every now and again and go and have a pint.