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etraytin · 4 years

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Quarantine, Day 86

June 5

Paperwork time is here again, let's all rejoice till we get migraines! Today the houseguests departed after breakfast, promising to be back anytime if MIL needs them, which was very nice of them. With just the four of us in the house once more, we turned our attention to the stuff that comes next. In the morning, MIL was determined to get a bunch of stuff cleaned out of the bedroom and the closet. She let my husband pick through all his dad's clothes for things he wanted (and I think she may have given the sisters a go as well, not sure) and then boxed up the remainder. All the leftover medical things got packed up, socks and shoes and belts from the drawers. She found one of FIL's favorite belts, dark brown leather and a large round buckle with a sculpted belly button on it. It was intensely weird and my husband wanted it immediately.

In the back of the closet, she found FIL's old backpack guitar, which nobody including him knew how to play but was special because the company that made it is headquartered in the town where my husband grew up. It was very out of tune and the thinnest string was broken entirely. She decided she very much wanted it fixed up and playable and asked if I could make that happen. A couple emails and a phone call, and husband and the kiddo were off to town to the music store. They came back in only about an hour with a tuned and strung guitar. I think that was the happiest I've seen MIL in the past several days. Kiddo spent some time noodling around with it,, and it's amazing how much nicer just fooling around sounds when a guitar is in tune! It's a pretty little thing that looks more like a ren faire instrument than a guitar, but it plays nicely. I bet there are guitar lessons on YouTube somewhere.

There was a lot of funeral home detail to work out too, even though FIL's planning was comprehensive. He was a thorough, careful man who obviously spent a lot of time considering the fact that he was fifteen years older than his wife and lifting as many end of life burdens as possible from her shoulders. His will was concise and easy to find, his obituary prewritten eight years ago, then updated four years ago and only awaiting plugged-in information. He prepaid for his cremation package and arranged what funeral home would do the work, and when the time comes that we can have a service, he left several pages talking about what he would like. Even with all of that, the process of winding up a life takes time and paperwork. I am technically a lawyer (one MPRE score away from being a double lawyer!) but I know enough to know when I'm out of my depth. We've still got an appointment pending with the attorney next week, only now it will be estate administration instead of asset protection. I had to fill out an entirely new questionnaire! At least it was easier than the first one. The attorney will be able to give us the nitty gritty details about what might wind up in probate and whether we need to do probate at all, plus lots of stuff I probably haven't even thought of yet.

Side note: did you know it costs 125 dollars to ship cremains in the mail? I did not know that thing. In other news, we are going to make sure we stay in town long enough to personally pick up the four separate boxes MIL requested (one for each kid) and thereby save many many monies. Everything about dying is more expensive than you would imagine. The price for obituaries is basically ridiculous. I guess it's just one more way of supporting print journalism. We're also going to wind up buying like 20 copies of that day's paper, even more support!

The rest of today's work was mostly making calls and inquiries to different banks and utilities to confirm that we can basically do fuck-all until we have the death certificate in hand, but that once we do, things should go pretty smoothly. I found a website called Peacefully that is basically a series of checkable lists of all the things you need to do after somebody dies. It's been very helpful so far. There's a lot of stuff that I never would've even thought of, just because I've never had a close family member die in a situation where I was even a little responsible for settling things. My last grandparent died when I was 26, but I was in my final year of law school and living far away, so I had nothing to do with that except picking out a few little things from her house before the big estate sale. (I got her jewelry box that plays Fur Elise, one I wound up about a thousand times in childhood and that still smells just a tiny bit like her house.) It's very different to be right up in it, but I'm glad that I'm not trying to help from 400 miles away, or worrying about MIL having to do it all herself.

Today was also notable for being the last day of school! Kiddo missed the first half hour because we were all distracted this morning with Nana's closet, but he got there in time for most of the school meeting and to see the slide show of the year. There was also a goodbye drive-through at the school this afternoon; he was bummed he couldn't go, but happy that one of his classmates' parents filmed it and sent it to the teacher for him. He watched it tonight before bed, waving to the teachers wistfully as the video played. I really, really hope he can get back into school in the fall! He misses it. Now it's the start of the most anti-climactic summer vacation ever and we have to find stuff for him to do for three _more_ months. Internet, don't fail me now!

Speaking of finding things to do, we got back on the Avatar train and watched a bunch tonight, with popcorn and everything. I love Toph so very, very much, and so does the kiddo. He appreciates someone who is twelve and can kick the asses of everyone in the room. It is also funny how everyone in the universe continues to be fully immune to bashing damage with the exception of Zuko, who still shakes his many head traumas off very quickly. It's also funny watching how in a TV Y7 show, a character fights with two sharp swords and never actually uses the blades on anybody. I half expect to hear a Phineas and Ferb-style "We're O-Kay!" from the minions at the end of each battle. After that was bedtime and a little bit of podcast, though not nearly so much as last night. He did come into my bedroom a little later because he kept having scary thoughts, apparently mostly about Nana getting sick and dying, but we were able to talk his mood around so that he got to bed at a reasonable hour. That is excellent, he needs the sleep.

#quarantine #backpack guitar #martin guitar #atla

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