My Sister Died On Her Birthday

Which I thought preternaturally tidy. She always was a tidy woman. I wonder what will happen to her things, to those remainders of life left in drawers & desks, to shoes unworn at the end since she zipped about in a “mobility chair.” Another oxymoron.

My daughter was ready to go out to Arizona from Virginia when she heard Aunt Teri was in hospice care. But when she called with flight arrangements, my brother-in-law said, “She passed last night.” And we have heard nothing since.

For all her computer skills, either Teri left no plan, no will, no scrap of “here’s who you contact if” paper. But I’m not one to talk about it since I’ve nothing either except conversations with friends none of whom would know how to contact my kid. Guess I’d best get something in writing.

Hell, I’ve barely enough to live on, let alone save for term insurance. I keep telling people “just toss the body down some abandoned elevator shaft.” And I’ve moved into an apartment built over a former Jiffy Lube with my unit atop the pit – a simplification if I’ve ever heard one. I don’t want to be a burden, I don’t want to cost anyone anything, I don’t want to have my face on a jar next to the restaurant registers with “Help bury this woman!” crayoned atop it. Yet this may still come to pass.

Take this month for example – rent increase, insurance due, deferred car payment impossible tho the bank said I could do that in February. I wonder how people do it…same as me, on a fixed income but a floating tsunami of a bill lurking on the horizon. Yeh, sure, I’ve got $500 somewhere, let me check the sock drawer. I’m counting on Valentine’s Day business to float me up n over like some innertube on the vast swells of a cashiered life.

I’m running for office here in town. The other candidates have 4-5 4 x 8′ signs all over the street corners – vote for me!! I have a $20/week ad I’m running, cleverly changing the lines. I was gifted $166 for my campaign. No epic Trump battles of the wallet bulge here.

So, whatever. I move along, steady as a plough horse crossing the field to the barn. I have food to eat & enough to pay the regular bills. I’ll put the insurance on one of the credit cards, grit my teeth & make payments. Maybe I could send the other card to my daughter & say, just charge it, honey.

Hope St. Peter doesn’t run credit checks. Gives new meaning to that old song, “I owe my soul to the comp’ny sto…”