Jack Gilligan always loved his garden - but his widow Patricia never thought his coffin would come to rest on the lawn he cut religiously every week.
In a bizarre twist before his cremation, the hearse had a puncture. The undertakers told his grieving wife the casket would have to be removed from the vehicle, which was outside the couple’s home near the Dunstable/Luton border.
“In that case you might as well take him through to the garden,” replied Patricia, a retired Dunstable florist’s shop worker.
Reliving that surreal moment, Patricia said she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“It was such an unusual situation but it really lifted the atmosphere,” she said. About 30 family mourners had gathered at the house and we all went and stood around the coffin.
“People started taking photographs and saying nice things, like it was almost as if Jack hadn’t wanted to leave. I suppose he was in the garden for about 20 minutes until the replacement hearse arrived.”
Jack, 76, a former Vauxhall worker, died of a heart attack on January 7. He and Patricia, 72, met ballroom dancing.
When age and arthritis put a stop to that, they took up dominoes and played in the Luton and Dunstable league.
They were married in May 1993, a second marriage for each of them. Patricia has many happy memories of her green-fingered husband cutting the grass and clipping the hedge with their beloved Labrador Goldie never far from his side. Now she has another cherished recollection - the image of his coffin covered in roses in the middle of the garden he loved