Luckily, I already knew having a comic thought at a tragic moment is a natural stress response, or I might have worried. My mum has died, making me an orphan – and what first popped into my head was how annoyed Larry David would be.

In Curb Your Enthusiasm, when Marty Funkhouser’s mother’s wheelchair was run over by a car, he proclaimed himself an orphan. David informed him he was too old to be an orphan. Funkhouser insisted that if your parents are dead, you’re an orphan.

“You could be 70 and be an orphan?” David challenged.

“You could be 100 and be an orphan!’ Funkhouser maintained.

“You can’t be 100 and be an orphan.”

“OK, Little Orphan Funkhouser,” concluded David.

Images of Annie-like red curls aside, the people who brought you into the world both having left it is pretty profound. I’m lucky to have a lot of support, but it’s a hard knock in life. A singularly specific brand of aloneness; the natural order that feels anything but. It’s so weird. There’s no one to tell me off any more, either. I wonder what I may get up to. What if I fall in with a........

© The Guardian