While You Were Dead

My father passed away 11 days before Thanksgiving (everyone start your psychoanalysis engines) and there was a ton of stuff to deal with...besides feelings.
He wanted to be buried in Europe, didn't have a will or any other affairs in order (after you read my blog go get that stuff taken care of people!). So, last few months of this 2012 have been hectic, to say the least. 
Some moments were comical...or I turned them into comedy/sarcasm so I wouldn't shank people.


At the funeral home picking out a casket...think about it, it's like buying a car...for your final voyage. So many models to choose from, religious motifs, blinged out, or not...all over $1,750,  as ours needed to be "special", zink lined, blah, blah, blah...for shipping overseas.
After we (my siblings and I) settled on a model (pretty nice, basic, silverish if you must know), the very patient, funeral director asked: "Do you have any other questions about the process or fees???"
Me: "Yes...what is the thread count on the lining of the casket?"
See my father was a Textile Engineer back home and he would come back and haunt me if I placed him in anything polyester. True story.

***

Month and a half after my father passed (aka just the other day), we were in the same hospital after my mother was involved in a head-on collision.
While in the waiting room I overheard this...nurse comes out and calls a patient (a woman that's been hacking up her lungs for God knows how long...at least the 45 min we were there). She greets her with a question "Are you feeling OK???".
"Why yes. I come here to pass the time. " I'm thinking.

***

Once we were let back in to the room my mother was held in admin came by with some questions (mother's health insurance lapsed til January 1st with my father dying...splendid). Clearly she needs to know where the money will come from for this lovely ordeal, but in order not to seem like a blood sucking leech she figured we will chat a bit first. 

First question was: "So I noticed in our system that you were here recently...how was that experience???"

My response: "It was great! My father dropped dead...something you failed to notice in the system, I guess". 

She left the room afterwards, never to return...enabling us to safely sneak out of the hospital after my mother was released. Score! (Little victories in life :-)).

*** 

So my mother gets in a head-on collision with some crackhead (way to go, couldn't have picked some rich old guy), the day after Christmas, gives her driver's license to the cop at the scene, gets immidiately hauled off to the hospital and her car gets towed, since it was totalled. 

Next day we realize that she left her work badge, work coat, house keys, garage door opener and a few other nick knacks in the vehicle. So I called the tow yard to see when I can come get that stuff. 

Tow yard attendant: "Who's the owner of the vehicle???"

Me: "Well, it is registered to my deceased father...it just happened a month ago, we were busy transporting him overseas and didn't transfer the title.."

He cuts me off: "Well, he needs to sign over the title to you."

Me: "Unless you can raise dead from the grave...that will not happen. I have his death certificate and a free and clear title to the vehicle?!"

Him: "Sorry that's the rules."

Really??? I LOVE rules, all of them. Good grief!!!