Waiting

The chimney and the dryer vent are clean and shiny now - that was taken care of this morning.  Caleb, the technician, showed me that we had a dryer vent brush that had clearly been used before, and showed me how to do it next time, but when he asked if he should go ahead and clean it anyway, I said yes - one less thing to deal with for the moment.

Seamus came by while Caleb was at work on the chimney and loaded up his pickup truck bed with an old non-functioning lawnmower, a non-functioning chainsaw, a non-functioning bread machine, a non-functioning dehumidifier, plus sundry other appliances and objects (the old stainless steel sink that was in the kitchen when we moved into the house ten years ago was residing up in the rafters of the garage - I don't know what Jerry planned to do with it, or if he thought he might sell it someday).  There's a metal recycler next door to the cabinet shop, so he was going to drop everything off there.  He also found Jerry's trumpet, finally, up in a closet near the entrance to the attic.

When the mail came, I discovered that the insurance agent was wrong when he told me he'd cancelled Jerry's supplemental health insurance policy - that seems to be pretty basic, I would think - what else do insurance agents do but open policies and cancel them?  Sigh... so I called BlueCross and they told me to send in a copy of the death certificate and they'll refund the premium amount paid up through August from the day after Jerry died, to his "estate."  However that's done.

Then I discovered that Classmates.com had charged Jerry $15 for membership five days after he died, so it took a phone call to the credit card company and then a phone call to Classmates.com to get that charge removed. I had already had them take down Jerry's profile, after having left a note there for a while telling visitors to it that Jerry had died.

I hate doing all these things, having to tell all these strangers on the other end of the phone over and over again that my husband died a month ago.  Which is sort of schizophrenic of me, I suppose, considering my earlier posting about seeming to be unable to stop telling random strangers that my husband died.

Meanwhile, still waiting for stuff.  Waiting for word (or, preferably, a check) back from the life insurance company.  Waiting for the lawyer, who's gone incommunicado, to get back to me and tell me what's happening - left her a message this morning, and Seamus has left her several messages over the last week.  Now waiting for the scary estimate from Steve. As of this morning, after calling to organize it, waiting for a one-time "death payment" of $255 from Social Security - why they pay that, and what on earth they think a person can do with that small an amount of money that will make a difference in her life, I have no clue.  At 47, and with no dependent children, I'm not entitled to any other Social Security payments on Jerry's account, although the woman on the phone did make sure to tell me that when I'm 60 I might be eligible.  As if Social Security will still be around if I make it to 60, or as if someone born in 1962 won't have had the eligibility age pushed to 85 by then!

A singer from Michigan who takes photos of people leading at Sacred Harp conventions sent me a framed photo of Jerry, which was very sweet of her.  It's on my desk now, where I can see it as I'm typing.  In it Jerry's wearing a blue polo shirt that I loved him in - it made his baby blues just pop.  You can see the photo here.  It was taken four years ago at Lookout Mountain.

[ETA: I just noticed he's wearing that same shirt in a picture in my previous post.  My handsome husband.]

I miss my honey.