My grandfather was left holding my grandmother's handbag after she died. He had gone to pick her up at a Whist drive only to find out that she had had a sudden heart attack after winning the top prize. At the time, I couldn't believe that she still wouldn't need her handbag - and all its essential contents - in whatever place she had moved onto. Similarly, when a client of mine was killed in a car crash, I was tempted to send him an email a few days later, just to see if he would reply. Surely, in the second millennium, you ought to be able to get online in heaven.

When I helped pack up Grandpa's possessions last Saturday, a few hours after he had died at the age of 99, I was still consumed by the idea that he must need some of them: the gold pocket watch that he had wound up daily by hand for the past 78 years, the heavy coal iron which he used to press his shirts. Grandpa had only given up his tailoring business a few years ago, and was meticulous about dress. How would he iron his shirts now? I wondered. I felt like I was being nosy going through his stuff. Especially when my cousin showed me the leather suitcase carefully packed with his Masonic robes, weird items and documents. A glimpse was enough, looking through that would be the equivalent of reading someone else's texts: out of order whatever the circumstances. It needed to be taken straight to the post office, untampered with, and forwarded on.