Thanks trueblu, and sorry to hear about your loss.
We had a very similar situation recently - I had to book a ticket for my wife for her to fly the next morning. It booked ok on aa.co.uk, but also showed not issued. The next morning at LHR she spent hour getting the ticket issued - and initially they wanted to rebook her onto a more expensive ticket, but she resisted that. Luckily there were seats on the aircraft and she had turned up more than 2 hours in advance so she had time to sort it all out, but it is not the sort of thing you want to be sorting out at a time like that.