I’ve been conflicted about whether to write about this at all. It’s the story of other people and belongs to them, so I must tread very carefully, tiptoeing around.

It started with my first parkrun of the decade on the new BeckenhamPlaceParkrun course. Hilly, through woods, around the lake in the newly-manicured park. Thought not a personal best time, I was happy with my performance around this more challenging course.

The onslaught started almost as soon as I’d returned home. I don’t want to go into detail here but both of my parents in law had been admitted to hospital in the previous week. There were all sorts of complications in being able to contact the hospital and people involved and worries about elderly pets with chronic health needs too. Trying to coordinate things with the acquaintance who accompanied my mother in law to hospital took a while but eventually I took an Uber to visit my father in law.

I was just a couple of minutes too late to see him, a nurse quietly explaining that he had just died. Pale and thin, his body was at peace but unrecognisable from the robust man in these pictures. My trip home had suddenly turned into a maelstrom of decisions that I’m unsure I’m qualified to make.

The past few days have been spent searching for documents and trying – and failing over the bank holiday weekend – to liaise with vets and doctors, friends and the church minister and deal with the emotions that a death in the family throws up, but over three continents.

It’s not the first time I’ve arranged a funeral or sorted through the paper trail of a deceased person’s life but the focus is intense and, since I’m only the daughter-in-law, feels intrusive. I don’t feel qualified to make decisions on the lives of someone else’s pets; to try and organise a post-discharge care plan for a guarded and frail woman whom I don’t know well; is it possible to organise a fitting funeral for someone you’ve known for 40 years but with whom you have so little in common?

I am baulking at the need to carry out these responsibilities properly given so little information but there is no-one else here to do it so the duty falls to me.