For much of the past 33 years, since (the now late) Mr. Scribe and I became an official couple, I’ve been a part of the Episcopal Church. I still consider myself an Episcopalian even though I’m currently “attending” (via Zoom) an ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) parish — it’s quite a bit more liberal than the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod (or as I refer to it, Misery Synod) of my childhood.
A portion of the standard Sunday service is the General Confession:
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
(emphasis mine)
When Mr. Scribe untimely left this plane of existence in early May 2020, he left quite a bit undone.
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Fortunately, one of the “left undones” has now been resolved. At the time of his death, his car had been parked for 5 months — he claimed he needed a new battery but didn’t seem to be interested in taking care of it. He mainly got around by transit and by walking — it may have been the short walk to the supermarket that led to the heart attack that killed him, but that’s another story for another time. Because I don’t drive, he didn’t put my name on the pink slip or the registration, so I had to go to DMV to get a copy with my name on it. What I found out was that he hadn’t even registered the car for the past 3 years, and the reason why it was parked is that he had gotten a ticket for expired registration. Paid all the back fees and fines, got the car smogged (actually his friend, who helped me greatly those first dark days until my sister and her husband came to take me to their home, took care of the smogging), and the Wednesday before Christmas I finally had the pink slip...along with registration and tags covering the car through September of 2021. My sister and her husband drove up here from her home (where I’d had the slip sent since I was still living there in July when I did the paperwork — I didn’t want to confuse DMV with an address change mid-process) and I signed off on it; this past Wednesday his friend, who kept the car so I didn’t have to pay storage charges and got the smog, officially took possession of the car. I’m glad it’s going to a good home.
Another “left undone” has been sitting for over 3 years now. In November of 2017, his mother passed away. She left him an inherited IRA (which is now in my possession) and made him the trustee of her estate. What she didn’t realize is that it was way more than he could handle, and because of my health issues (and maybe a bit of pride) he didn’t ask for my help on it so he never followed through. So now the ball has fallen into my lap as successor trustee. I’m currently in the process of trying to gather information on how much money there is, and more important, where it is; some has ended up in unclaimed property and some, I fear, my late husband may have spent. Right now it’s a waiting game for folks to get back to me with the information; with the holidays and all I’ll probably hear something either late this month or maybe early February. But at least the ball is rolling again; sadly if he’d resolved it 3 years ago we would have had a lot more financial security, maybe could have even moved into a nice place, done some traveling, etc. But hindsight is usually 20/20 vision, and I can’t change what was — only go forward and have as good a life as possible without him.
As many of you know, I’m now living in an all-inclusive and actually affordable on my income retirement community. I’m likely to be here the rest of my life unless I need assisted living or memory care a couple of decades down the road. It’s a good place, even with the COVID Crud hanging over us, and with the vaccine on the horizon I’m hoping there’ll be at least a small return to what was Life Before as I’ve heard of from long-time residents. My hope is that I’ll have the last of the loose ends tied off sometime in 2021 and can really move forward. Maybe even start dating again...who knows?