One of the things about dealing with a sudden death after the deceased’s short but swift decline in health, with little preparation, is the massive pile of paperwork that needs to be managed with very few clues. An anticipated death with time to prepare still has its own trauma and weirdness, but at least there’s closure of some sort or another (one hopes), loose ends are (somewhat) tied up, and Things People Need To Know are (hopefully) laid out with few surprises.
It’s crazy enough dealing with retirees who’ve had a chance to prepare, or with folks holding down a regular job. But when the sudden stroke of death falls upon folks who are self-employed, and the deceased is the one who’s done all the bookkeeping…well, chaos can ensue.
Which is what we’re dealing with in regard to our friend. Now DH and I have walked this road already with parents. We both lost both parents when we were relatively young (in our 30s and early 40s), and in those cases there was some preparation (not in the case of my mother-in-law but certainly with my parents). But with our friend, not only did her growing decline reduce her ability to do the filing and organizing but she didn’t have time to leave the rest of us with breadcrumbs about how to access e-mail accounts and where certain files were. Even when you’ve known someone reasonably well for 32 years, you don’t know everything about where they put or do stuff, especially when it comes to accounting and business files.
But we’re getting somewhere and the piles of paperwork are ceasing. Just–folks? Even at a relatively young age, for heaven’s sake, document your important financials and how you access them and track them. Don’t leave it to those you leave behind to play the forensic accounting game. Even if you don’t have a lot of money–actually, especially if you don’t have a lot of money–document. Talk to your nearest and dearest about how you keep records. If you don’t like leaving password cookies on your computer, then keep a list where your nearest and dearest can find the passwords.
That’s all on that subject.
School is going well but I hope to be able to back off on the total hours dedicated to support work for the classroom and caseload soon. The beginning of the year is crucial for setting up documentation and data, and I’m getting there slowly. The actual teaching isn’t the challenge, it’s all the paperwork and such that goes with it that can bog a teacher down. I’m enjoying my social studies classes.
Writing–well, all the other stuff is bogging it down, which is annoying since I have some good ideas on Uprising and some good publicity stuff is coming up. But I’m annoyed that it’s taken me so long to get Uprising out the door. It should be good, but still….
Horse–horse show coming up at the end of the month. With reining and trail classes, and the token Western Pleasure classes to practice our rail consistency.
Now back to the mounds of stuff to be done.
