Personally, I have no plans to return to UK if OH dares to pop his clogs without me
France is our Home… absolutely.
and if I go pop first, OH is so well entrenched here that he would be supported by the Mairie and neighbours… who already spring into supportive action when he has one of his (many) emergencies.
Our old haunts in UK no longer exist… sad but true.
We’ve built a network of friends/memories in France and they’ve already offered support when Brexit reared its head… Death would simply bring out even more of the best in 'em.
It is a very sensible thing to discuss as generally one arrives here bright eyed and energetic with no thought of mortality. But then life carries on and things change and need to consider new issues.
Inheritance. Any family that is recomposed needs to take advice about implications on inheritance because of the now reinstated forced heirship here. You can never guarantee who will go first and could be very hard for the one left behind.
Physical or mental Incapacity. If this happens do you have a sufficient support system here to be looked after the way you want? I don’t want to end my days alone in a EHPAD not understanding, and not having anyone to help me understand. Having looked after my in laws with dementia it would have been hell for them had we not been there.
Language skills. So important and can decline with age. Could you cope alone?
So there’s the ideal world of what you might like to happen, and that needs to be challenged against possible realities.
We are not returning, but we are now moving (within France) in order to be somewhere that would be suitable for either of us alone. And well before we have to so this is a new adventure.
When I do the maths I see that I have spent nearly half my adult life living in France. I have four children and only two of them still live in the UK. My wife died here last year. It was after she died that I became conscious of the fact that we called France home. I have UK and Irish passports. To be honest I view my self as European.
I do visit the Sceptered Isle from time to time. Nowadays it feels in some ways like a foreign country. But I still watch some UK TV and listen to the radio on the BBC.
I have always presumed that I will remain here where I live and have not once in the past 25 years considered moving back to the U.K. Like Gus I have spent a lot of time here, I left the U.K. on the 4th April 1986 and that’s a long time ago. I visit from time to time but never feel any interest in returning for more than three or four days. One of the things I need to do is to initiate a funeral plan so all my children will need to do is to ask one of my friends to phone a number to set the wheels in motion.
These are all really great comments and stories and sorry to read about your wife Gus.
Me and my wife have worked all over the World but always felt that somewhere in Europe would be home. So yes, Europolitans.
France is lovely but I do forsee the time when we will need to move back into a City, in a place with an elevator and closer to amenities without having to drive around with a chainsaw and winches in the boot. But I hope that won’t be for at least 10 years. This talks to the point about health.Sue also mentioned about language proficiency and this is very valid point.
I can’t imagine going back to UK after being away for so long but would consider going back to Brussels. Great vibe and great food!
We are facing this at the moment. Husband has had two years of non-stop ongoing treatment for life-threatening illness. We have had excellent medical treatment, fantastic support from carers and from lovely neighbours here, but if we move back we will have family around us to support us both and that feels more important as time goes by. We couldn’t afford to buy, but we can afford to rent. We would move to a town with good medical services and transport links.
I think no matter where you choose to end your days having a good quality of life at the end is more important than anything else. I’m currently watching my 90 year old mother’s life ebb away in what is to me absolute misery, she has zero mobility, poor eyesight and is reliant on carers and my sister and I to keep her going.
We intend to do whatever we can to avoid the same fate.
I think most people here know my answer to that, even Fran, who had almost no French but could communicate with friends by some magic of their own, was insistant that we stay here for ever and no cremation, only burial just down the hill and, as the flowers I keep on her grave need watering if there has been no rain, I get to stand on my own grave (I know which side of the very large area is where she is) every dry day and chat about what I have been doing and how the dogs are, everything in fact including the weather. We are next to a south facing wall, catching all of the sun and never feel the cold north wind blowing down the valley.
I can’t even imagine a trip back to England now, never mind a permanent return.
The only worry I have is if I become too mentally unable to live here, despite the support that I know from recent experience is available, but if for some reason my shutters are not open by midday a well oiled machine springs into action, starting with my neighbour and spreading out to others who need to know, including those tasked with looking after the dogs.
Interestingly I think our “end of days” can loop back to our “beginning of days” and the decisions we made at the beginning of our time in France mean that we have choices 18 years on. This is not always the case for people here who cut all their ties when they first came.
In our early days here I used to advise people not to cut all their ties with the UK, if they could, in case they found things didn’t work out for them. We did just that. We were fortunate in having the top floor flat of a property we inherited from his Mum. We needed a mortgage to buy it, but over the years we have had pretty steady rental from it and importantly - although it never occurred to us at the time - it has steadily increased in value (unlike our French property). That ever-increasing asset has meant that we have been able to sell up, use some of the money in France and also buy a small flat in a town centre in the UK, for the one of us who will be left.
It’s taken a LOT of discussion to reach this decision (OH was firmly convinced he would never return. I was firmly convinced we didn’t need to do anything for years).
We love here in France. We are in the most beautiful location and we have peace and tranquillity and yet are only 10 minutes from town. But, we are facing our own mortality, having both had serious health issues and (importantly) no one to turn to in the event of our demise to sort out our estate and any inheritors facing 60% inheritance tax - and we have no interest in leaving our money to anyone here in France.
So, when one of us goes, the other will sell up and move back to the UK to the small town centre flat we are buying now. For the one who goes back it will be a new adventure - it’s a town we know by reputation, but don’t know, with an excellent cultural life. We’ve seen friends who have gone back reluctantly (because of ill health or family problems) but that will not be for us. We have thought this through now, while we can share these decisions and have the energy and stamina to make them.
What is giving us pleasure is that we are doing the best we can to “future proof” life for our OH and also ensure that those we wish to leave our money to will benefit to the maximum and will not have to go through the agony of dealing with a complex bureaucracy in a foreign language. That feels good.
If like me you have lived here over 30 or more years then the UK is just somewhere foreign now and would you want to be buried or ashes scattered/interred somewhere foreign, I know I would never want that. Both my kids are financially secure and know my house will be theirs one day so the costs of a french funeral are not really too important and my OH is sitting on the top shelf of my dresser here waiting for the day when we will move back in together again or both be scattered to the four winds, not in the sea though, he couldn’t swim! I know from having mum die exactly a year ago in the UK how long it takes from death to cremation (7 weeks in all), the lack of care by the NHS, the greediness of local councils who forced us to sell the family home within three months of dad dying so they could get half of it and then mum put back on the same financial system before they got that money. If you have a nice home here and have friends etc, stay where you are as its what you know
That to me is a huge point. We are doing what we are doing now to have a new adventure, rather than waiting until it is the end of something and we have no other options but X. And hopefully many years of having a new adventure together, and building new memories in a new place.
Neither of us could manage this place alone, and if something happened the survivor would have to leave, and leave all the memories too. It’s been a great 17 years, but time to do something different now.
Exactly what I have done by selling the family home three years ago and moving 1200kms south to a house I had built. Hard to leave all those 30years of memories behind but making a list of pro’s and cons, pro’s won outright in terms of practicality and freedom and being ten mins from immediate family rather than that thousand plus kms with one visit per year. Not only practical but refreshing to get rid of all that previous clutter that, in the grand scheme of things, would be discared anyway when I go and I did not want to foist that on my kids when we had already gone through it previously. I don’t have to worry now about continual maintenance of an ancient house, the damp getting in my bones and worrying everytime the wind blew that the slates would still be there next day and all that garden whereas now I have very little but enough for what I want to do and I have neighbours now who keep an eye out if my shutters are not up each morning.
I think for our children and adult grandchildren, one of the hardest things has been the fact that it has been difficult for them to support us through the last difficult years, as they would have done if we had been in the same country.
The town where our daughter lives has an excellent hospital and good GPs.
As for a final resting place I would only ever want direct cremation with no funeral or fuss and my ashes can go in the channel.
Our French friends understand completely the desire to be close to family.
We might have thought differently about it all a few years ago, but, as ther say, circumstances alter cases.
