I’m back from my trip east to take over my Mom’s financial affairs. It was a very long trip, though I got a lot done. I was constantly split between the financial affairs and helping Mom with stuff, which made for two weeks of a lot of running around.
It felt like progress was slow, but I did make progress. I applied Power of Attorney to her bank account and it cleared by early in the second week. And I worked on getting access to her investment accounts, which was straightforward for some of them and difficult for others. The variety of processes was a bit surprising to me, I’d have expected more standardization. But I did make progress on all of those. While the procedures are somewhat annoying, I appreciate them because I certainly wouldn’t want someone else to come in and fraudulently take over her accounts (or anyone else’s, such as mine!).
In hindsight I should have started on changes-of-address for her bills sooner, but I was reluctant to get them moved over to coming to me until I had the ability to write checks on her account. Once I knuckled down, though, I got the most important ones moved over. The hardest one to deal with was Comcast, which I had to handle by bringing my POA form to a service center, but I got that done on Saturday morning before I left. Unfortunately many utility companies have pretty pathetic facilities for doing these sorts of things on-line, so I spent a lot of time on the phone. The time I called places while visiting Mom was very productive, since they could talk to her right there to confirm what we were doing.
Going to the house was often hard, knowing that we’re winding things down on the place where I grew up. On the bright side, I did get to meet a couple of sons of a neighbor who’s been in the neighborhood even longer than I have. I remembered the sons from when I was a kid, and it was interesting to meet them as an adult. We probably haven’t seen each other in 25 years, but we all remembered each other pretty well.
I didn’t get many breaks, as I was running around much of every day, and was making phone calls or faxing or mailing things, or organizing Mom’s documents much of the rest of the time. I did have meals with Dad (and sometimes Mom) most days, went out for evening walks in Dad’s neighborhood, and even went down to visit Debbi’s family on Sunday of the middle weekend. But I didn’t get to see my other friends in the area, or do any reading or much else. It was busy and stressful, so much so that I went to bed late because I had trouble making myself go to bed since that meant having to get up to face a new day of stuff I didn’t want to do.
It was fun seeing Mom and Dad and Debbi’s family, but most of the rest of the trip was no fun.
But I think I got the important stuff done, though I’ll work my way through more stuff in the coming weeks. I may have to go back again this year, but hopefully that trip will be less crazy.
I flew back yesterday afternoon, watched The Avengers on the plane (it holds up pretty well, though it’s still no Captain America, nor The Dark Knight Rises), and got most of the way through a novel.
And was very, very happy to get home to Debbi.
Great work!