The Friday night call

The phone is on charge in the kitchen. By the time you reach it, it has stopped ringing, and the screen says Missed call: Hospital. Your knees know what your head does not yet know.

You get back in the car. You drive in the slow lane, deliberately, because for twenty minutes you can still believe it is something less than what it turns out to be.

Nobody expects you to do paperwork. But somebody will mention a funeral parlour, a doctor's certificate, a death notification and the fact that the bank will eventually want a death certificate.

The first piece of paper you actually need is the BI-1663 (the Notification of Death), which is completed at the hospital and used to issue the abridged death certificate at Home Affairs. The funeral parlour will usually do the running for you.

You will be asked, more than once, where the will is. If you do not know, that is not a failure; it is a clue. Look in the obvious places: a fireproof box, a desk drawer, the safe at the office, an envelope clipped to the inside of the wardrobe door.

If you cannot find it, do not panic. The Master of the High Court can issue Letters of Executorship on a copy if a search affidavit and the original drafter's records support it. It just takes longer.

By Sunday night you will have spoken to a funeral director, possibly a religious leader, the family doctor, two banks (one of which will freeze the account before you finish the sentence), an insurance broker, a sibling who lives overseas, and at least one neighbour who somehow already knows.

Almost nothing financial has to be done in 72 hours. The estate cannot be reported until you have a death certificate. SARS does not care this week. The bond does not get called. The stress lies, mostly, in not knowing what you are about to need.

A single page that says where the will is and who drafted it. A list of every bank account, with the branch and the last four digits. A note of which policies pay outside the estate and which pay into it. The PIN to the iPad the deceased used. The phone numbers of the three people who must be told personally before they hear it second-hand.

It is not romantic. It is the difference between a hard week and a hard month.