I detest mornings like this one today. I do not enjoy errands of most sorts - but usually I just drop into auto-pilot mode and trudge ahead. And this morning, in this usual way, I tried to convince myself that it would not be very hard after all.

But even though I tried to play it out like any other errand - the tension and the strain was not in any way avoidable and it built with every step down the sidewalk.

Jenny's estate tax number finally came in from the IRS - and the bank needed a copy along with a reproduction of her death certificate - that I would need to remove from their vault. And since I didn't want to go through _that_ again, I planned to keep a copy of the certificate to bring home.

Leaving the bank my trudge took me past the Ashland fire station where I again saw the ambulance where Jenny died. Today was a hot day - all the more impossibly hot when compared to the icy miserable abomination of a day when Jenny was killed by a volunteer EMT who lost control of his vehicle - like so many others that day.

On the last leg of my own miserable journey I stopped by the town offices to register the deed I had been given to Jenny's grave some time ago. And as I walked the halls of Ashland town governance, there were a few brief moments of confusion as I tried to explain to all who might listen what -in my obvious ignorance- I thought I was needing.

Finally the correct office was discovered, typing ensued for a time then ceased, the proper signature was affixed by a hidden authority, and then -quite beyond my expectations- a clerk handed the completed deed to me with an apology for what seemed to her to be inordinate inconvenience.

Almost home, I realized that the deed should have gone into the vault along with the extra copies of Jenny's death certificates, but I was in no mood this morning to revisit the bank. Besides, it was pretty obvious to me that the cemetery plot is duly purchased, recorded, witnessed, marked, filled and quite otherwise unusable beyond its present consecrated service - deed or no deed.

I have come to see quite clearly on days like this that the process of death is as much a financial, legal and business proposition as it is a matter of grieving, and loss, and coping with a new way of living.