Representin'

I wear many hats. Father, husband, graphic/web designer, king of awesomeness. Well, maybe just the first three. But another hat I've recently had to put on is Personal Representative of An Estate. Specifically, my dad's estate.

Yup, I'm finally writing about my dad dying. Kinda.

I would imagine that, as these things go, I've had a relatively easy time of it. Most everything has been straightforward, and the various businesses I've had to contact, to close out accounts and whatnot, have been helpful and accommodating. But they all seemed obligated to tell me they were sorry for my loss, and that got old fast. Especially the ones that were clearly saying it because they felt obligated to. There were some refreshing exceptions. There was the one... I think it was the credit union... that, instead of saying they were sorry for my loss, said they apologize for my loss. My guess is that they apologize for problems a lot, and "sorry" just automatically comes out as "apologize" over there. So that amused me. I also talked to a couple of medical supply companies that actually took the news kinda hard. It would seem my dad had built a nice little rapport with them. It was kinda depressing, but still better than hearing condolences from people who didn't really care all that much.

I've had to send a lot of copies of the death certificate and the paper giving me authorization to represent my dad's accounts. So this has been one of those times where I'm really glad to have a fax machine here at my house. That came in very handy, especially for the time that my first attempt didn't go through, and I didn't find out about it until about a week later. Gotta fax again? No problem! Of course, having the fax machine combined with a scanner almost caused me problems. I had scanned a picture that PG had drawn, and I forgot to take the picture off the scanner afterward. A few days later, I went to do a fax (the aforementioned re-faxing, in fact) and realized, as the phone was dialing, that the five pages I had just scanned through the top feed had, in fact, passed behind PG's picture, and I was about to send five copies of her picture to Merrill Lynch. Luckily, the fax machine on the other end hadn't even picked up yet when I realized the mistake and canceled the fax.

Other than that, the only real hassle was closing my dad's bank account. My parents had a joint account, and my dad never took my mom's name off of it after she died in '93. So they wouldn't close the account until I had both death certificates. I searched through my dad's stuff (that's how I found the newspaper clipping in his briefcase) to no avail. So I was left with having to go to the Division of Vital Records to get my mom's death certificate. This, in and of itself, would not have been much of a hassle, but both the Vital Records website and Google Maps did me wrong when I tried to get directions. All I could get from the VR website was the address, and Google Maps, for some reason, auto-filled the wrong town when I put the address in. So I went way out of my way, only to drive back and forth over a 5 mile stretch of road, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go. I finally called M, and, as fate would smile upon me, she had actually been to Vital Records before and knew not only where to go, but also that Vital Records is inside a mall. Never in a bazillion years would I have seen that coming. So, once M had me set straight, I was good to go. Before that, though, I was cursing my old man for not taking care of this himself.

So, I have most everything squared away now. Still have to work out a couple things, but that should be done soon.

Fun times.