Written by Pearl F. Wood

I attended my first funeral in early February 2026. Honestly, at the age of 33, I would have thought I would have attended one sooner. It was for our neighbour Paul, who had recently turned 85 and, sadly, suffered a stroke.

We lived at Dean Court for over eight years, and we had known him pretty much from the start. I remember him seeing the moving van and, in the friendliest and gentlest manner, coming over to introduce himself. He was a wonderful neighbour.

Every Christmas, he would invite all the neighbours to his flat. He would place a small nativity set outside his front door, and he would ask one of the children to carefully place the fragile ceramic Jesus into the manger, and I always hoped he would not pick one of our clumsy kids. He had an old cassette and CD boombox, the kind I remember having as a kid in the nineties, and somehow he had taken such good care of it that it still worked, playing traditional Christmas carols. Afterwards, we would all enjoy mulled wine and warm mince pies in the garden, talking together about the Christmas season.

Paul always had a willingness to serve his community. He even wanted to set up a litter picking group around the neighbourhood, to help keep it clean and safe, but no one ever volunteered. He also kept himself busy stewarding at the Bolton football stadium and volunteering for various charities, and despite his schedule, he still thought of our children often and would bring them toys, snacks and little gifts. I think this helped him feel close to his young son who lived in Tanzania. He must have missed him greatly.

Oh, and when he first told us about his thirty something year old wife, and about becoming a father again while nearing 80, it was the neighbourhood gossip. He also had adult children, children older than us, and he had been in a previous marriage of over 40 years. But after some time spent on a Christian mission trip in Tanzania, he found love again and married Anna, who was 50 years younger. Unfortunately, neither his wife nor his son were able to come over to the UK for the funeral, but they were able to watch it through a live streaming service.

There was something particularly moving at his funeral service. One of his sons mentioned that Paul often used to say, “Life’s not a rehearsal,” and I had never heard that phrase before. But it’s true, isn’t it? The priest added to this point, saying that sometimes there are parts of our lives that we get right, and other times we can mess things up. But through both the good and the sadness, we have to reflect, and treasure the present time we are in. He also liked to emphasise how we are all a big bunch of sinners, and that we need to ask for forgiveness and for God’s mercy. But, just like at a pick and mix sweet stand, I am only choosing the best bits.

During the service, I noticed a few other Dean Court residents had attended. Christine, who John and I often referred to as “The Cricket” because of her frail, bony body and her frequent complaints that sounded like a cricket’s chirp, was at the front with her zimmer frame. Stuart, less keen to take a front pew, was tucked away in the middle of the congregation. He was known in the neighbourhood as an alcoholic and was regularly seen heading to the corner shop for his daily supply of drinks. He claimed he could not work due to crippling anxiety and a lack of social skills, yet he never seemed to struggle with socialising in the pubs until the early hours. But who am I to judge?

John and I had one particularly unpleasant encounter with him. Paul had organised a summer party and barbecue shortly after we had welcomed Ronnie. When Stuart saw our two children, he bluntly asked, “Do you both do anything else apart from have sex?” We left soon after, and I haven’t spoken to him since.

A few of the nicer residents came too. Tim and Gabby used to be our neighbours in the flat next door. Tim liked to organise an annual pumpkin carving competition every Halloween and would often invite John into the garden to talk about life over a few beers. He was extremely green-fingered and would spend hours tending the gardens, making all the flowers, bushes, and plants look beautiful. Unlike our side of the garden, where I clearly lacked green fingers and seemed to have the hands of the grim reaper, killing everything I touched, his part of the garden looked like paradise. Ours, by comparison, always felt more like a sludgy, muddy underworld.

Gabby worked at the nearby Marks and Spencer. One Christmas, she gave John a small port, blue cheese, and crackers set, reduced with a yellow sticker. From that moment on, something changed within him and he suddenly acquired a taste for the finer things in life. Nowadays, he can often be found in the evenings, happily snacking on olives, cheeses, and sipping wine, as if that tiny discounted gift had unlocked a secret world of sophistication.

Gabby was also devoted to her many, many cats. It was only several years later that we realised Tim and Gabby had struggled with fertility and were unable to have children, so their cats became their whole world. Knowing this, I never felt comfortable telling Gabby that her cats had a habit of treating our side of the garden like their personal litter tray, as it would have felt far too insensitive to point out. They also liked to jump in through our windows and make themselves at home. One time, I even found a cat in our daughter’s crib, settling in for an afternoon nap!

You could tell that the dynamic of their relationship had changed one day. Whenever Tim left for work, we noticed a very tall, long blonde haired, slender man arriving shortly afterwards at the front door to pick Gabby up for what she called “hiking” in and around the Lake District. What started as an odd occasional visit soon became almost every day.

John and I would peep through our blinds and witness the flirtatious behaviour, the hand touching, the giggling, and we knew something wasn’t quite right. I said straight away that she was having an affair. John replied, “No! There is no way,” insisting that I always saw the worst in everything. “You wouldn’t act like that around someone if you didn’t like them THAT way, and besides, she is spending more time with him than with Tim,” I countered.

We never knew the name of the mystery man, so we named him “Mr Porsche”. One night, Tim found a secret love letter in one of Gabby’s drawers. Gabby insisted it was not for Mr Porsche and that it was a memoir, a diary entry of sorts, written to help her process her emotions. In the letter, she described how she enjoyed the way he made her feel, the way they kissed, and the way they touched, but she pleaded there was no other man, despite the fact that she and Tim had not been intimate for months. I do not know how much Tim believed it, but they had a huge argument, and Gabby did not come home.

Tim, despite his heart being broken, feared the worst and asked all the neighbours in a group chat when we had last seen her, thinking she might have gone missing. It was then that a few of us came forward and revealed that Mr Porsche regularly came to visit and that he and Gabby had been going on their “walks” together. That night, Gabby was not with Mr Porsche at all, but was actually in one of the other flats with a girlfriend, enjoying a glass of wine, which made the argument even more heated when she returned.

Tim and John spoke about this one night over beers. Tim couldn’t understand how Gabby could possibly be having an affair with Mr Porsche, since he had a wife and several children and had been a friend of both of them for years. Not to mention that he lived so far away, over an hour’s drive to Lytham.

Inevitably, Tim moved in with a friend while trying to find his own place and soon moved out of Dean Court. Around the same time, Gabby was made redundant from Marks and Spencer and had to put her flat up for sale. It really broke her to do that. She tried everything she could to keep the flat, but the cost of living crisis made it impossible for her to live there on her own.

Mr Porsche invited Gabby to live with him on the coast. At the funeral, Gabby disclosed that she had moved again since then and is now living on her own in another small flat, so I can only assume things haven’t worked out with him. Tim, being the respectful and true gentleman that he is, said nothing unkind about her failed relationship and held no malice or resentment. Despite not having seen each other since the affair, he still offered her comfort and they sat together at Paul’s funeral.

John and I left the Roman Catholic church beside Bolton bus station, each holding one of little Ronnie’s hands, as he was four at the time, and began to make our way back home. It is impossible to come away from a funeral without having some deep philosophical conversations, contemplating the meaning of life and discussing the difference between joy and happiness. But there was one question that truly haunted me as I walked away from Paul’s funeral service. I kept asking it over and over again, and I could not distract my mind with anything else. I knew I could not share my thoughts with John just yet, because Ronnie was in that exhausting phase of constantly asking questions and interrupting with innocent observations.

The question was, “What would I want people to say about me at my funeral?” And I found I could not answer it without also asking myself, “Am I happy with my life right now?”

Chapter from My Second Book

This is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some cases names of people, places and the details of events have been changed and characters created for artistic purposes and to protect the privacy of others.