Most pension companies are working with serious backlogs at the moment anyway, so claims are taking weeks if not months to process from start to finish depending on the company. Anyway, in practice, there should be no issue at all with you retiring from the job in May and deferring drawing down your DC occupational pension scheme benefits in late November / December.
Occasionally I've seen schemes which automatically switch your fund to cash at normal retirement age, which might or might suit you. You can usually ask to immediately switch back into other fund choices if you'd prefer not to be out of the market.
If you've retired from the job and contributions have ceased to the DC scheme, your fund becomes a "preserved benefit" in the scheme until you draw it down. In the event of your demise during that gap period between May and December, your spouse would inherit the entire fund tax-free without being restricted by the 4 x salary limit. So in the interests of efficient tax planning I would advise that you plan your demise to occur during those months.