A Funeral Story Part 3

Part 3

We drove home that day in shock and somehow avoiding the reality of what had just happened. We managed to sidestep dealing with the actual death and instead concerning ourselves with the next tasks we had to get done.

We came home and decided we needed to call his biological kids and let them know that their dad passed away. Let me go back 25 years to give some background info. Dean came into my life when I was about 4 years old. He got into a relationship with my biological maternal grandmother, who’s only reason for being in my life I am convinced, was to bring him to my life. She ended up leaving him for a black dude 20 years younger than herself about 7 years ago. I haven’t spoken to her since. Anyway he was married for about 20 years before my grandmother and two sons. I can’t say why they didn’t have a relationship. He was my grandpa we talked about things like gardening and Emeril not relationships gone bad.

So I found his ex wife’s number who I know nothing about and called her and let her know what happened. She immediately launched in telling me about how he was a mean man and when they got divorced she only got 20k. When I got divorced I got bad credit and a shitty ex-husband who never pays child support. I would have rolled naked in 20k if that’s what I would have gotten out of a divorce. I told her I may need his son Darrell to call and get the VA to release the body to me and she informed me that the other son was older but if he wouldn’t then Darrell would gladly do it. This woman and Darrell have had no communication with him for 29 years but in the last year she had started calling him out of the blue. He told me he thought she was checking in to see how much time he had left. I then called his other son, Wimberly (don’t ask me where the shit that name came from). He did have a small relationship with this son and I have talked to him before on the phone. He said he would help in anyway he could. He also told me I should have never called his mother because for as long as they have been divorced she has said when Dean dies she’s “going to get her piece”. He said that I shouldn’t call them back and let them know when the funeral was either because they would make trouble for me. Like I needed one more damn thing to worry about.

We had to wait until Monday for the VA to finally call me and tell me that everything was OK for me to make the arrangements for the funeral home to come and pick him up. They put me through all the worry and now I had let two vultures know that he had died so now I had them buzzing around.
I went to the bank on Monday to see if I was ok to write check from his bank account since I knew I was on there and I would have to pay funeral expenses. She told me that I hadn’t been on his account since early 2009, which is when this nosey ass lady across the street started coming around and somehow got him to put her name on his checking account in case something happened she could pay his bills. His lawyer then told him to get her the hell off his account, which he did but he opened a whole new account with 3k in there in case anything happened. He put her name on it so she could write the checks. Her husband ended up leaving her shortly after and she asked if she could borrow money from my grandpa. He let her have 500 bucks and told me she doesn’t have to pay it back because she’s having a hard time. So after I left the bank I called her and asked her to go take out that money and give it to me so I could pay for things. She acted very strange on the phone and said she would call me back. She called back telling me the lawyer said she didn’t have to give me the money. She didn’t HAVE to give me the money legally but you would think it was his money, he just died and his family needs it to settle things you’d gladly hand it over. She said he told her the money was to pay his bills. Later that day I had to get an AC guy over because we’d been staying in the 90-degree house for days. While he was still there I called her again and asked if she could bring the checkbook over and write him a check. She started yelling at me that the money was to take care of his dog and asked if she could have the dog. I told her um no you can’t have his dog and she asked ME why would you do that? I said you need to pay this bill; it’s a household bill. She then told me the money was to pay his credit card (which has a current balance of .20 cents.) and asked for the credit card so she could cancel it. I told her I wasn’t giving out his credit cards for other people to cancel. When I told her that she said she wasn’t giving me the money because he didn’t trust me. With that I said, you’re a terrible human and hung up on her. I hope she doesn’t think that I am just going to let it go. Oh I wish I could. Instead I will photocopy every bill he gets and send it to her in the mail. Will she pay them? Hell no. Will it be a constant reminder she stole from an old man? Yep. Will it be annoying to her? Yep. Will it save me jail time because I won’t burn down her house? Possibly.