Toni Le Busque's stories.

Today my brother skyped me to let me know that some friends of my mother had decided that we had given my mother a ‘pauper’s funeral’.

They called it ‘undignified’.

I told my friend, Jacqui Pasquale, a woman who my mother liked a great deal, and whose husband she adored.

'Norma wasn't dignified', said Jacqui, 'but she was real. And so was the funeral.
But they are right-dignified is not the word I would use to describe it.
Dignified does not trump authentic and full of love.’