Lou Hynes and her husband Pete spoke about absolutely everything, but death and what they both wanted to happen next never cropped up. Like many busy couples, they thought they had many decades to prepare. Then tragedy struck.
The couple first met while working as new recruits for the same company in Leeds. After returning from separate work trips – he to China and she to New York – they met up for a drink to swap travel stories. Lou recalled: “We just ended up sharing absolutely everything that had been going on with us, and we both sort of recognised that something shifted that day and things were never quite the same.”
Sparks well and truly flew, and the couple went on to welcome two children and tied the knot in 2017. Speaking with the Mirror, Lou, who already had a child from a previous marriage, describes Pete as being “really clever, really bright and witty and funny”, the sort of individual who “made every day just a joy to be together”.
Life was good, and at just 40 years old, Pete was fit and healthy. Lou, now 48, never imagined that she could lose him so suddenly, and in such a “traumatic” manner.
It was December 2022, and the whole family was struggling with the “winter snuffles”. Feeling unwell, Pete took himself to bed one Saturday morning, with what he then believed to be an ear infection.
Caring wife Lou kept popping in throughout the day to check on Pete and bring him paracetamol. Then, later on that evening, Lou heard “a huge crash from upstairs” and discovered that Pete had fallen out of bed and was unconscious.
A paramedic who arrived at the scene informed Lou he’d had a seizure. From thereon, the evening descended into “chaos”. Lou shared: “Ambulances were called. I followed in another ambulance; I tried to get my friend here to the house to look after the children. He was in the resuscitation in A&E and was shortly after put into the intensive care unit because he had swelling on the brain.
“They didn’t know what it was at that point, and they basically were pumping him full of all the drugs and medication to try to counter the effects of whatever was happening. But sadly, just a few short hours after they’d done more tests, he’d become unresponsive, and the swelling on his brain was so severe that his brainstem closed down, and more tests revealed that it was a rare form of meningitis, bacterial meningococcal encephalitis.”
On top of the already devastating ordeal of saying goodbye to a young and “amazing” husband, Lou was also left having to make arrangements for a funeral neither one of them had discussed. At the time of Pete’s death, neither he nor Lou had drawn up wills, and there was only one detail she knew he’d wanted for his final send-off.
Lou told us: “The only thing that we had, when Pete did die, the only thing I knew for certain, because we sort of joked about it, was the idea of a wicker casket. And we’d seen that on a TV programme, and we just sort of joked about what a good idea it was and how much more environmentally friendly it was. So that was the only thing that I knew for certain that he would want.
“Other than that, I mean, we hadn’t even drawn up wills yet. It was something that we kept talking about, but then, you know, that kind of thing gets to the bottom of the list, doesn’t it? Because there’s everything else to do, and life gets in the way, and you just think, well, you know, we’re young, and we don’t need to even think about that kind of thing yet, really.”
Fortunately, Lou was able to find some guidance from a “very dear friend” of hers and Pete’s, who had been the humanist celebrant at their wedding.
At this sad time, she was once again on hand to help point Lou in the right direction. Lou said: “I immediately called her to tell her I knew that I wanted her to conduct Pete’s celebration of life ceremony, and so she was the one who guided me through it, really, and said, ‘Well, you need to contact the funeral directors.’
“She was good enough that she knew someone up here that she knew that would align with my values and that they’d be really good with me, so she pointed to me in their direction.”
Lou still remembers sitting in that funeral home, being asked all sorts of questions that she just didn’t know the answer to, while still being in a state of “shock”. According to Lou, dealing with these plans whilst in the “depths of grief”, all while arranging Christmas for her children, was among “the most surreal experiences” of her life.
She continued: “Not knowing the best thing to do but wanting to do the best for the person you’ve lost, it just all felt really confusing and having to make decisions about things that you haven’t even talked about, haven’t ever discussed.
“What kind of casket, flowers, then kind of once all that had been arranged you’re coming home and you’re trying to find photographs and putting an order of service together and music and who would carry the coffin and what I wanted people to dress like for the venues for the celebration afterwards, the crematorium, all of that and it just, it’s so, so overwhelming.
“And you’re trying to do all of that whilst juggling grief and shock and the loss of the person that you’ve loved. It was all-consuming, it really was. Where I felt maybe more fortunate was that our celebrant friend, who was guiding me through this, she said to me at the time, and it was because she wasn’t available, that she was like, ‘You know, Lou, there’s no rush. You don’t have to do this within a couple of weeks. So you can take your time and do Pete justice’.”
Pete passed away on December 5, and the family held the cremation and his celebration at the end of January. This gave Lou the time and space to sort Christmas for her children, before spending January focusing on making those difficult decisions. She added: “But again, not many people often have that time, or want that time or don’t think they have that time.”
New research from employee benefits and protection provider MetLife UK found that less than half (46 per cent) of those who have suffered a bereavement within the past two years felt prepared to organise a funeral or memorial arrangement.
Lou isn’t surprised by this figure, and had thought it would have been higher. She remarked that she “didn’t have a clue”, and was left facing a number of unexpected hurdles, including the question of who was going to carry Pete’s coffin into the crematorium.
She explained: “Everyone has to be a certain height because you can’t have one person that’s shorter than the other three otherwise that coffin is going to fall or something. So that was something that we hadn’t really considered. So even those kinds of logistics, me having to call around Pete’s friends and his brother and his dad ultimately then wasn’t able to carry his coffin because he was a lot shorter than the others. So my dad stepped in instead.”
Ringing around and asking them how tall they all were felt “like the most ridiculous of questions,” but Lou, of course, didn’t want to run the risk of “something catastrophic” happening if the coffin was unbalanced. She hadn’t anticipated this sort of additional logistical stress, and she also hadn’t imagined just how “exhausted” she would feel at the end of the day itself.
She remembered: “Everyone wants to talk to you, everyone wants a piece of you, and to be okay with setting that boundary that you’re done now, and you might just have to go home and leave when you feel ready, and you know be absolutely okay with that. Or maybe to say you need a bit of time out. You know, everyone wants to come and pay their condolences and have a bit of a chat, and just being prepared for how emotionally exhausting that is. I mean, I just collapsed into a heap when we got home.”
According to MetLife UK’s research, a quarter of those polled reported that they’d struggled to make decisions while grieving, while one in five spoke of how this had brought more stress at an already difficult time.
A further 18 per cent revealed that the planning had resulted in arguments within their family or friendship circle, while just 16 per cent said that they were comfortable making funeral planning decisions to keep costs within budget. Furthermore, 14 per cent stated that funeral planning had impacted their ability to carry out their work.
It was also determined that fewer than one in five (17 per cent) had written down and shared their wishes for their own funeral. Nowadays, through her work with Lou Hynes Coaching, Lou helps workplaces become more grief-literate through her grief education sessions. She also encourages people to make sure they have those uncomfortable conversations about death, however difficult that might be.
Lou told us, “Really, talk to your loved one who’s maybe going to be organising your funeral about what songs you might like, even down to whether you would like to be buried or cremated. I mean, we had discussed that at least, but they’re really difficult decisions to make.
“My children wanted to speak at their dad’s funeral, so helping them with their words and me writing my eulogy and all of those sorts of things are hard enough without the basics of not knowing who they might want to carry their coffin into the crematorium or wherever it might be.”
Wanting to choose a venue that “felt aligned with Pete,” Lou opted for a pub with real ale and plenty of gins—one of their favourite tipples.
She also looked at a cricket club, as Pete loved cricket. She continued: “You’re trying to do your best by that person and really honour that person and give them the send-off that they deserve while you’ve been dealing with grief and the turmoil of all of that as well. So I would really encourage people to sit down, think about what they want, have a conversation with their loved one about it and just be quite clear.”
Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com
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