Is your house in order?

[Marcus]

...piper...

At our most recent family funeral we had bagpipers play at the church, and then at the burial, a lone piper played in the distance as people paid their respects before the coffin. at the very end, as the coffin was lowered into the ground the lone piper, still playing, slowly turned and disappeared into the trees, his plaintive notes slowly dissipating into the rustle of the wind in the trees.

It was an incredibly moving event.

[Xenophon]

Jersey Girl, I appreciate you being so willing to share your personal stuff here. It is obvious that you've clearly got a great grasp of the work to be done, even if some of the details are yet to be ironed out.

Anyway, it wasn't all that a complicated because I was the only one making decisions.

I will say this was about the one saving grace to the whole thing (that and a highly supportive spouse). Although he had remarried, they had not been together for very long and she is the kind of person that is very differential to others. She was more than happy to let me take charge and only chimed in on a few things that she felt strongly about or that Dad had shared with her.

I've purged most everything accumulated over the years that I could on my own. I got really good at it, too, and it's freeing! It took years for the Boy to get on the same page because he's accumulated way too much inventory devoted to "just in case", but he's coming along if at a snails pace. Got rid of two vehicles and when I went to do thrift store drop offs, he started by handing me one book. Then more and more things. When I read your comment about your Dad's belongings...pretty much the same mindset and approach, and it's not fair to the children involved who have to go through everything as it is. If personal belongings are in a state of disorder, they shouldn't have to go through that and compound the situation they are faced with. I'm still working on a few categories myself and then...I have to compel him to rip the band aid off of what's left.

I think this is one of the hardest things for everyone to tackle. It is difficult to realize that all the things you have accumulated over the years, things that may have been deeply sentimental or meaningful to you, may not be desired by those left behind and just complicate the process. He had been saving several furniture sets, boxes of chachkies that may at one point had meaning or story but were now unknown, and a wide array of tools... all of which he thought that I would want some day (we'll ignore for a second that he wasn't even using them, and they just sat in storage ). Of course, I already had basically everything of his I wanted apart from a few sentimental personal items and a small set of hand tools that belonged to my great-grandfather. Leaving behind a storage container full of things that were mostly too nice to trash, too trashy to sell, and difficult to donate. It certainly has me eyeballing my own possessions and really trying to put motive behind why I own them. Am I just holding this for some unknown reason? Do I intend to ever use it again? Would someone actually want this passed to them? I've never been prone to hoarding, perhaps in response to my parent's own habits, but it has me putting extra thought to it.

One of my biggest undertakings before all this was finally digitizing all the family photos for both me and SO. We just had countless large boxes full of family photos clogging up our closets. A few evenings every night we'd sit down and scan photos in and try to label them with any information we had as to the who/where/when. When we were done, I provided a hard drive and cloud storage link to every last one of them (I did a nice digital frame for some of the less tech savvy relatives that cycles through them all). I then informed everyone that my intent was to discard the physical copies if I didn't hear back from them. I offloaded a few of the physical ones but the vast majority went unclaimed. But now we've taken all those boxes of unseen and unappreciated photos and put them in the hands of our loved ones in a very usable way and removed the need to process them later.

Lawyerish things

We had a family friend do the third-party seller option with a lot of success. She had a fairly long run-up to her passing and was able to make quite a few considerations. Part of that work included bringing her few children over and literally marking items for them she wanted. The ultimatum was issued that anything they didn't mark and claim then would be subject to sell/donate/trash will of the estate seller. That obviously may not be viable given your current situation, but I always admired her directness on the matter. She had one child that was reluctant to engage but her forwardness was able to push her over the edge and commit to some things. Personally, I've begun to catalog those few things we have the I know people want, just a simple excel spreadsheet with the pertinent details. I'll keep sending those positive vibes out into the universe for you.

[Jersey Girl]

...piper...

At our most recent family funeral we had bagpipers play at the church, and then at the burial, a lone piper played in the distance as people paid their respects before the coffin. at the very end, as the coffin was lowered into the ground the lone piper, still playing, slowly turned and disappeared into the trees, his plaintive notes slowly dissipating into the rustle of the wind in the trees.

It was an incredibly moving event.

Bold mine. That's exactly what I want. I think you have easier access to pipers in your area. But we do have them here I just need to locate a good one so Ma and I can take the low road together.

[Jersey Girl]

Was just looking at some of my words here. When I say I basically want people crying their guts out, it's because I think it's so important and so cleansing. Where grief is concerned, I usually tell people to let themselves feel it all, wallow in it, recover from it, and do it again and again as need be. And by that I mean, moving through grief without delaying it, ignoring it, getting stuck in it. I've done it myself and in spite of the pain, I think it's healthy. It'll last a life time, but I do think we should let ourselves feel it.

[Jersey Girl]

Jersey Girl, I appreciate you being so willing to share your personal stuff here. It is obvious that you've clearly got a great grasp of the work to be done, even if some of the details are yet to be ironed out.

Anyway, it wasn't all that a complicated because I was the only one making decisions.

I will say this was about the one saving grace to the whole thing (that and a highly supportive spouse). Although he had remarried, they had not been together for very long and she is the kind of person that is very differential to others. She was more than happy to let me take charge and only chimed in on a few things that she felt strongly about or that Dad had shared with her.

I'm happy to have the conversation. We have it together over here frequently. I don't care about putting personal stuff here any more. We're all going to go through this. I don't mind talking about it.

You've got me thinking about a few things now. I see some possible answers to my own questions. Thank you! I'll reply to the rest later or tomorrow.

[Xenophon]

Glad you got through it, Xen.

Well I don't know if I'm fully out of the woods yet but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless

Thank you, and i extend my sympathies for your loss also. We were also on very good terms with my SO's siblings ex, so that wasn't the issue, but a very difficult additional issue was that my SO was the health proxy because his sibling had no living will, and he had to make the final decision to remove life support. That was an agonizing time.

Going back I may have worded my response poorly, I didn't intend to suggest either of my examples applied to your situation so apologies if that came through in my post. I was attempting more to get at how many human factors are always at play around death and for me how that speaks even more to the idea that I should solve as many of the logistical problems as I can in advance. The health proxy thing is certainly a rough position to be in and I empathize greatly with those tough decisions and hope y'all have been able to grieve and recover some from that.

Xeno what I learned when my Ma died was that I lost the one person in my life that I could always count on to love me no matter what and who loved me like no one else did or has since. That is not a cut on the Boy. It's simply the truth in a way that is difficult to articulate.

I can certainly see that. I think another issue for me is that Dad was the last close living blood relative I had. There was some extra weight in his passing around my own mortality and the legacy I am leaving behind.

[Marcus]

Thank you, and i extend my sympathies for your loss also. We were also on very good terms with my SO's siblings ex, so that wasn't the issue, but a very difficult additional issue was that my SO was the health proxy because his sibling had no living will, and he had to make the final decision to remove life support. That was an agonizing time.

Going back I may have worded my response poorly, I didn't intend to suggest either of my examples applied to your situation so apologies if that came through in my post. I was attempting more to get at how many human factors are always at play around death and for me how that speaks even more to the idea that I should solve as many of the logistical problems as I can in advance.

no worries, i understood your point, i was just agreeing there are so many factors.

The health proxy thing is certainly a rough position to be in and I empathize greatly with those tough decisions and hope y'all have been able to grieve and recover some from that.

Thank you so much. Hoping the same for you, my friend.

[Some Schmo]

Sorry for your loss, Xen.

We've talked about our plans a lot, so we know what we want, but my wife and I both agree that we've got to get it written down. The biggest thing is that we don't want to leave anything to chance (i. e. the courts).

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Thanks for posting this stuff, Xeno. My wife and I have talked about how we’ll want our estate dealt with extensively and my hope is if either one of us pass we’d be able to go into autopilot mode and get what needs to be done, done. Writing everything down, identifying an executor, and writing it down (and notarizing it) has put us at ease. Have I mentioned writing it down? A checklist is the only way to go, in my opinion.

- Doc

[Xenophon]

Sorry for your loss, Xen.

We've talked about our plans a lot, so we know what we want, but my wife and I both agree that we've got to get it written down. The biggest thing is that we don't want to leave anything to chance (i. e. the courts).

Thanks, Schmo, I appreciate that.

I think talking through it is definitely a must but at some point, we all have to put pen to paper. I'm sure you've experienced it but personally I don't trust my brain when I'm grieving. I drop balls, miss details, draw total blanks on things I know I've thought or talked about 1000x times. This has been the thought behind not just having my standard will but also trying to explicitly detail out other desires/wishes/plans. It will also be helpful if SO and I happen to pass together, I've certainly discussed what should be done with the kids but I wouldn't expect them to execute on that without comprehensive instructions.