Last week our mother passed away. She was 91 and in a lot of pain. She was sleeping and in the end, while certainly we will miss her, it was for the best. Now the process begins. And I thought it would be interesting to share with you the experience.
On Monday, I received a call from my sister that she found our mother non-responsive in her bed. She was alive, but unconscious. Apparently, she had suffered a massive stroke while in bed. It looked as if she was resting. Our mother had a do not resuscitate and no feeding tube order. While my brother and I both made our way to Northern Virginia, my sister placed her in hospice care at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA. The staff was amazing, we could not have asked for better care. We spent Tuesday at the facility and in the evening, our mother passed away peacefully. Our mother lived at Vincent Hall, a retirement community in McLean, VA. Our sister lived ten minutes from our mother and was her primary care giver. Not wanting to dump the initial clean-up on our sister, the three of us spent the next four days going through our mother’s apartment, making sure to take important documents, any items we wished to keep as a family and arranging for the removal of what we did not want to keep, which we will donate to Habitat for Humanity or dispose.
We did find a card written by our mother two years earlier, wanting us to know how we touched her life as her children. Needless to say, it was hard to get through. I consider myself fortunate, I have a brother and a sister with whom I get along quite well, I would say I consider each not just a sibling, but among my best friends. There is no fighting, and we are in harmony. I cannot imagine how hard it would be now and going forward if we didn’t have such a relationship.
While cleaning our mother’s apartment, we reached out to all of our relatives and close friends, arranged for her cremation, and started to plan the next steps. Gosh, it really is a journey. As executor, I have reached out to her financial planner and her estate attorney, though without a death certificate these will not move forward until those are received. Our mother was clearly older and at this stage her estate is less complicated, but having a full record of all material and items, certainly will make it easier.
Finally, we are fortunate, a few months back, our mother made our sister a joint account holder on her checking account, and as such, a number of the upfront bills are easily taken care of, rather than needing to be financed by the executor until the estate is settled.
I will do my best to provide you with regular updates within this blog, so you can see and experience this journey.