I'm sorry man. It sucks. It just does.

I'm sorry to hear about all this (latecomer to the thread that I am). My condolences.

Y'know, the details were a bit different, but I was in your shoes some thirteen months ago. It's...still a little odd. But it's life.

Finally got his ashes today. Took longer than expected. Thought it was going to be last Thursday or at the latest, last Friday.

My mom called the Funeral Home on Friday to ask what was going on. She laughed when he told her the reason. This is funny to us, but...maybe not to other people. Things were taking longer than expected since he died near a holiday, so they had a problem getting a doctor to sign the death certificate. That is funny because it seemed that every time he ended up needing to go to the hospital for something, it was near a holiday and had to wait because everybody was on vacation.

It was near Christmas/New Years where he was admitted in 2000, but had to wait until 2001 to have a quadruple bypass done. Another time he was in because of chest pains near Independence Day since I remember him saying he could see some of the fireworks from his room that night. Don't remember when it was though. I know there were some other times but I can't remember since I can't recall anything interesting that happened.

Anyway, not sure where we're going to put him. We don't have a mantle or even a fancy urn to put there if we had one. The "standard" slate-gray colored cube he's in right now does look tasteful. Heavier than my mom thought it would be.

Random thought. My mother was looking at a newspaper the other day, then looked up with a thoughtful expression and said, "I'm a widow now aren't I?" I responded, "Yup. You are." Then we went back to what we were doing. ... What was I doing? Um, I don't remember... Probably watching TV at that time.

So... Anybody have any questions or things you were wondering about? I'll probably answer them. Even if you think it's out of line, I'll probably still answer it.

Hey.


I don't really have much more to say but wanted to make sure you knew that I am here.

I haven't been around for the past few weeks, so I missed this. So sorry to hear. Sending hugs.

Again I thank everyone for your condolences. Now as for Steave... I thought you were a Schrodinger Steave. You are always here and always not at the same time. If not, I will be sorely disappointing to have invested in Simultaneous Phase Weaponry.

Well, anyway, It's been two weeks now since he died and right now the biggest problem is that we still haven't received the death certificates. That's holding some things up.

He has some life insurance. Not much since he never paid anything on it. But enough to cover the cremation and and hopefully enough to finally get the last two old windows in the house finally replaced, since those damn things leak air like mad. He received it from the family friend I mentioned above who just dropped it on him one day.

Though saying she (and her husband) were just "family friends" is correct and not, in a way. My dad's father was essentially "adopted" by them when he came home after serving in WWII. Then when my dad was born, he basically became their grandson. They took my dad fishing, camping, and...other things I can't think of right now. The odd thing though, is that they would do everything with him, but nothing with his sister and brother. She was always investing in life insurance, savings bonds, property, and who knows what else. Her mind was sharp, even when she was 101. Though when she changed her Will a week before she died the relatives on her husband's side try to say she was coerced into changing it. But that is a whole different story about greed and stupidity. But if someone asks I'll go into more detail. ... I'm getting sidetracked aren't I?

Fife insurance policy. My mom called the company to tell them that he had died and what the policy number was. The representative said that she would send the the needed paperwork that my mother would have to fill out (and send back with a death certificate). Then the rep asked if he had any other policies. My mom didn't know of any. The rep responded that he had five policies, not just one. At this point when she was calling them, I wasn't there. I had finally gotten a hold of the person whom we'd started a job with before my dad went to the hospital and was over there working to try and finish it. My mom called me and she sounded odd and she started talking about the insurance. I thought at first how she said things, that it wasn't valid after all, and I was thinking "oh no..." since we didn't have the money to pay for everything we knew would need to be payed. She was kind of in shock was all. All of us including my father didn't know there was more than one.

At least now, it looks like I won't have to disassemble and sell my Ultimate Collector Edition Lego Star Wars sets at this time after all to get some more money. I did cash out all of my savings bonds --from the family friend-- I had though. At least they were all near maturity so I didn't lose out on too much more interest. So my mom is "borrowing" money from me at this time to help pay for things until everything gets sorted out. Honestly, I don't really care if she pays me back or not since we need to pool our resources to get through this. Also I've been perpetually broke for so many years, I barely buy anything anymore.

I'm rambling again aren't I?

Well, time for something funny then... My mother thought she should contact the my dad's medical insure and tell them what has happened. I said that she probably didn't have to since they most likely already know he died. So she decided to call them anyway. As expected she was put on hold while waiting for an available representative. There was some music and sayings about 'we will be with you shortly', 'your call is important', and other stupid things. Finally it does hook up with a person who says their name and how may they help you. She says...something like this,"My husband has insurance with your company and he passed away recently." There was silence for a bit then he said, "Who are you trying to call?" She said the name of the insurance company, and he responded, "This is Mattel."

We both thought that was hilarious. Figured out she had transposed two numbers when she first wrote down the phone number. Then after she dialed the correct number, we found out they did indeed already know.

Ah, one last thing. The day after he was cremated, his TV started to act funny. It now won't show any video of any sort, but you can still hear everything though. My mom said it's kind of freaky that it would go out now and maybe he is trying to tell us something. I said, "Yeah, 'It's my TV dammit, I'm taking it with me!'"

So now we have a 40 inch TV setting in from of a 46 inch TV since I brought mine downstairs. It looks stupid but we don't have anyplace to put it right now, and I might be able to fix it. Had to go back to using my old 20 inch analog TV upstairs. Damn, things are hard to make out on that screen.

Hey Zil, I know I'm a little late but I wanted to offer my condolences as well. I hope you don't have too much trouble getting the certificate. My uncle died earlier this year and my aunt had to wait FOREVER before she got the certificate or told a cause of death.

You may be slightly confused but that's understandable.

The truth is that I am always here. Even when I am somewhere else. Anywhere* else in fact.

Good news? The simultaneous Phase weaponry will still work if ever you need it.

... or thinking of who I'm talking to, feel like a laugh.

*maybe everywhere.

Well... I was going to have some other updates, but just never got around to it. Though there isn't really that much more to talk about I guess. Just a few things I'll touch on.

About a week after my last post, the death certificates finally showed up. We received three copies of them but we probably should of gotten more than that. We had no idea how many we needed. Other people said we should of gotten five. Though so far it has been one to the life insurance and one to the lawyer. We may need more since we have found others that could be valid life insurance policies.

Anyway, the one we did know about has been paid to my mother. So she was able to pay off the funeral home. Then there are the things we wanted to do for years, but really couldn't afford to do.

But before I tell you all about that, I have to tell you about the biggest worry my mother had (and myself somewhat). My dad's credit cards and other accounts were basically all maxed out. It would be about half the cost of the life insurance to pay them all off at once. So she called one of the credit card companies and was told that...it's not her problem since it is not in her name. His estate handles those things, and he didn't have any investments of any sort, so...the lawyer says not to worry about it since he essentially doesn't have an estate. Most everything just transfers over to my mom with no problems.

Now back to where I was... Finally ordered the last two replacement windows for the house. Hopefully we won't freeze as much this winter now. I said "as much" since we can't turn the heat up very far since we only have electric base heaters and those gets damn expensive. My dad for a few years now, was thinking about getting a pellet stove put in since it would be much cheaper. We are looking into it. Also I know that we need more insulation in the attic.

They had been wanting to get a new bed for ages since they had the same waterbed for 30+ years, and that thing has been falling apart/leaking all the time now. Also neither one could sleep all that well anymore in the thing. Though for my dad it could of just been the peritoneal dialysis machine at night that was mostly the problem. He would turn the wrong way in bed and pinch the tube so it would not drain/fill correctly and an alarm would go off and interrupting the little sleep he could get. Kept falling asleep during the day all the time. The fistula in his arm was so he could go on at home hemodialysis and maybe feel better/get to sleep at night and get the excess fluid off that the peritoneal was not have as much success at anymore. Though after the fact, it appears it was more likely the sudden blockages in three of his heart bypasses was why the fluid was building up. Anyway I'm getting away from what I was originally talking about. My mom got a new (regular) bed. Was just delivered yesterday, and she slept much better. Found the darn waterbed was leaking yet again when we removed it.

And we were able to order the new cabinets to remodel the kitchen a few days ago... The thing about the kitchen, is that when we moved here in '93, my dad promised my mother that he would give her a new kitchen since the current one was really bad. The doors didn't fit right, the whopping three drawers didn't slide right, and it had a horrible layout. 22 years later and...it is much worse. Tried fixing the doors years ago, and figured it was a lost cause and never put them back up. Don't even use the drawers anymore, we use a chest of drawers in the dining room instead. The sink is in a horrible place and there is virtually no counter-top. So, he is finally giving her that new kitchen he promised...once I rip everything out, fix the floor, replumb and rewire everything since everything is moving, rip out the annoying part of the wall that makes it difficult to come in the back door...and replace the back door with a larger one... I'm not sure when I'm going to have time to do all of this.

Oh, when I designed two new layouts for the kitchen, my mom couldn't get a really good idea what it would look like from my scale drawing of the room. So I went and recreated it in Minecraft at a 20:1 scale. She liked my second design better.

Damn, I was just going to do a few brief things, and I ended up rambling yet again. Okay, let me end this with the real reason I decide to post in this thread again.

Received the claim my dad's health insurance paid for the 18 days he was in the hospital. Now remember, this is just the hospital, not the doctors, nurses, or anybody else. We have already gotten many of those. Kept thinking that it seemed too low when everything was added up. And it seemed like many major things were missing from those. This has the major things. I have removed any identifying info.

Hospital Costs

Gosh, Zil -- just catching up now... I'm so sorry. And that seems so trite to say, but I mean it.

Are you looking for employment at this point? I don't know what you do or where you are, but on the off chance I can help, I figured it's worth asking.

Well when it comes to most things in this world, we usually know the correct thing to say in about any situation. But when it comes to death...people don't really know what exactly is the appropriate response. And nobody wants to talk about it. So...oh well.

Now as for employment... Actually, someone contacted me wondering if I would like to work for him. Which would be great since it's the same thing I was doing with my dad for 22 years. It's just going to be the two of us as well. So pretty much the same as when I was working with my dad.

Only thing is, he wants to hire me as a subcontractor instead of hiring me as an employee. Unfortunately I need to get liability insurance...which hasn't been going so well so far. I really don't want to start my own business, but I guess I have too. Oh, and I also need to figure out what I want him to pay me.

I am very stressed right now.