Well, now it is time to tell you about the year 2004. My sister had died on October 30th of 2003. Her house in Garland near Dallas was a lovely three bedroom with a creek in the backyard that she and I had shopped for only a few years before. Now,I had inherited it, three cats, and two dogs. The three cats were adopted by one of her dear friends and the dogs were left. An email that was sent around Plano ISD where she had worked garnered a home for them. They were quite unruly mixed breed dogs that were quite hard to place and which I did not want to keep. I had promised her that they would go together because they were litter mates and had been together their whole lives. That, thankfully, was accomplished.
Physically and emotionally both because of my loss and the disability, I was not ready or able to dispose of her house. Unfortunately, she did not have credit life on her loan so I had to pay the mortgage as well as my own until I could get myself in a place where I felt ready to let go of it. At that time, I was still getting the disability from work so the finacial strain of my decision was not too bad.
My brother-in-law was working in Dallas for a few months at the time, so he stayed at her house rather than stay in a hotel while he was there. That relieved any worries I had about someone breaking in an empty house or the house having issues (like a water break or some other disaster) while I was not there to see it and catch it in time. I will always be grateful to him for staying there for me. He is in the flooring business so he removed and replaced all her carpet and repaired tile in her bathroom that had lifted over the years. Again, I am grateful to him for taking care of that for me. It made the sale the house later an easier thing to do. With three cats living in the house, replacing the carpet was absolutely required. Thank God for Berry, my brother-in-law.
There are any number of things that the surviving family (which consisted of ME) has to do to settle an estate. The mountain of paperwork and visits to insurance companies, the Texas State Teachers' Association, her place of emplyment which was Plano ISD, and various other institutions, all ofwhich will drive a perfectly healthy person completely out of their minds. To say nothing of the funeral and all the decisions and expense involved in that.
Thankfully, Rachael had purchased a burial plan and nearly everything was taken care of financially. Even so, the plan did not include the actual coffin, vault, ceremony, headstone. or forms and fees. All that came to over $10,000.00! For those of you who have purchased such a plan and heartily believe that your family will not incur any expense when the time comes...think again. Reread and reevaluate your plan. You may not have what you think you have.
Okay, let's talk "stress" and Fibromyalgia since that is what I am telling you all this for anyway. I was a mess, to say the least. All the symptoms of fibro are exacerbated by stress. The pain is worse, the IBS is worse, the incontinence is worse, the depression is worse, the sleep issues are worse. Stress control is the name of the game when dealing with fibro.
I was seeing a cognitive behavioral psychologist weekly to help me with learning to deal with the stress so that I could hopefully get a handle on the pain of the fibro. One day in session, I mentioned all the trouble I was having with resolving the estate, especially dealing with the Texas State Teachers' Association when he bolted upright in his chair and fairly blurted out, " YOU are trying to do all this yourself!" To which I mildly replied."yes" and wondered why he seemed so alarmed. He told me to immediately take all my paperwork and literally dump it in a big box and take it to an estate attorney to deal with. He told me to not try and organize it or figure it out or try to present it to the attourney in a pretty organized package. He said get it all in a box and get it to the attorney. Do not do it myself.
That was good advice. I called an estate attorney and took my box to her. She had all the correct letters and forms filled out and in the mail within a week. She reduced the mountain of extraneous paperwork. It was shredded and gone. She presented me with a tiny folder of understandable, organized, minimal, actually controllable information. The BOX was gone. We went to court also within a very short time for probate and it was over.
OMG, don't ever try to do all that yourself even if you are the executer. It will send you to your grave with your beloved departed.
Rachael was a pack rat. I am too, by the way, so I send a beware here to my husband and son for when the time comes for me to go. But, for some reason unknown to me, Rachael and her friend(the one who took the cats) had cleaned and organized her whole house other than the garage, office and attic about six months before she became ill. I will never know what inspired them to do this but I am grateful. Not only did it provide Rachael with an uncluttered home for a goodly time but it made my job of clearing the house for sale easier.
Since the estate work was accomplished by the attourny, I reluctantly turned my attention to disposing of the house. You know, I didn't want to sell it. I had helped her find it and went with her to buy it. I loved the house, its layout, its location, its yard and creek as much as she had. I would have packed it up and moved it to my property here in Alvin if such a thing were possible. For that matter, had my family not been here in the Houston area rather than Dallas, I would have just moved into it. I liked the house that much. Even now, almost 6 years later, I lay in my bed some nights and imagine the beautiful crownwork of her bedroom ceiling and cry that I wasn't able to keep that house. In my mind, I walk around its rooms and putter in the lovely kitchen and well, you get the picture.
When we were spending weekends together, Rachael and I, going around with the real estate agent, we talked about how we would live there together like the Golden Girls when we were in our 70's and 80's and 90's. We talked about how we would sit on the back patio and listen to the creek babbling away. How we would go to plays and take day trips and weekend trips and generally just enjoy our "golden" years. Many times, even today, I shake my fist at the sky and yell, "We were supposed to be old ladies together!"
How did this happen? How could she have contracted this horrible thing called cancer and leave? Why am I here and she isn't? How? Why? Why? How? Questions that will not be answered in this life.
