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I received a phone call this afternoon while I was at work.
We were all sitting around the lunch table when it happened. Angel answered the phone, asked who was calling, then looked sideways at me to indicate the call was mine.
It was my mother's former employer, calling me to discuss getting together over the paperwork for her 401K and her life insurance policy.
That's right: life insurance policy.
Apparently, my mother had a policy and never told me about it. Long ago, right after she went into the hospital for the very last time, I gathered up every single scrap of important-looking paper in the apartment and organized it like the good little OCD freak I can be. Filed away in a storage box, in individual and labelled folders. None of it, however, had anything to do with life insurance. It was completely and totally unknown to me. And my brother, for that matter.
Now I'm being told that yes, she did indeed have a life insurance policy and that my brother and I are going to receive the money from it (I'm not quite sure how to describe the money, other then saying something like 'benefits', but I don't think that's correct).
It's not a crazy-insane amount. Well. To me, anything over fifty dollars is a crazy-insane amount of money. But, it's not a retire-from-my-job amount. It is, however, enough money to make my poor little bird-brain boggle.
I don't know what's going to happen, especially with her creditors, so I'm not making any plans for this money. It could easily be mostly taken away from me (I'll be contacting Uncle Binky, the estate attorney, on Monday for advice). Despite that, I did a lot of dancing around today.
There's more than a little bit of confusion over why I was never told of the life insurance's existence. Some people have suggested that she might have just forgotten, but I find it hard to believe that she would have forgotten about such a thing. My family lives so paycheck to paycheck, and always has, to believe that would have been the case.
The visit to her former office was hard to do. I saw a lot of people who know me, since I used to also work there, and a lot of people offering their condolences (despite the fact that it's been some months and nary a one has bothered to contact me before this). There were only a handful of people there whose company I ever enjoyed and I saw only one of them today.
That one sat down with me in the lobby and asked me what had happened. Halfway through the story, I realized there were tears on my face and I was beginning to have trouble speaking. I apologized and explained that I don't often talk about what happened the day Mom died. It's still too raw, and not even just around the edges. Holding my hands, she quietly talked to me until I calmed down enough to breathe properly. She brought me tissues and pushed my hair back from my face to look at me.
Know this, she said. You did everything you possibly could.
We were all sitting around the lunch table when it happened. Angel answered the phone, asked who was calling, then looked sideways at me to indicate the call was mine.
It was my mother's former employer, calling me to discuss getting together over the paperwork for her 401K and her life insurance policy.
That's right: life insurance policy.
Apparently, my mother had a policy and never told me about it. Long ago, right after she went into the hospital for the very last time, I gathered up every single scrap of important-looking paper in the apartment and organized it like the good little OCD freak I can be. Filed away in a storage box, in individual and labelled folders. None of it, however, had anything to do with life insurance. It was completely and totally unknown to me. And my brother, for that matter.
Now I'm being told that yes, she did indeed have a life insurance policy and that my brother and I are going to receive the money from it (I'm not quite sure how to describe the money, other then saying something like 'benefits', but I don't think that's correct).
It's not a crazy-insane amount. Well. To me, anything over fifty dollars is a crazy-insane amount of money. But, it's not a retire-from-my-job amount. It is, however, enough money to make my poor little bird-brain boggle.
I don't know what's going to happen, especially with her creditors, so I'm not making any plans for this money. It could easily be mostly taken away from me (I'll be contacting Uncle Binky, the estate attorney, on Monday for advice). Despite that, I did a lot of dancing around today.
There's more than a little bit of confusion over why I was never told of the life insurance's existence. Some people have suggested that she might have just forgotten, but I find it hard to believe that she would have forgotten about such a thing. My family lives so paycheck to paycheck, and always has, to believe that would have been the case.
The visit to her former office was hard to do. I saw a lot of people who know me, since I used to also work there, and a lot of people offering their condolences (despite the fact that it's been some months and nary a one has bothered to contact me before this). There were only a handful of people there whose company I ever enjoyed and I saw only one of them today.
That one sat down with me in the lobby and asked me what had happened. Halfway through the story, I realized there were tears on my face and I was beginning to have trouble speaking. I apologized and explained that I don't often talk about what happened the day Mom died. It's still too raw, and not even just around the edges. Holding my hands, she quietly talked to me until I calmed down enough to breathe properly. She brought me tissues and pushed my hair back from my face to look at me.
Know this, she said. You did everything you possibly could.
