Tomorrow is the day

Funeral preparations, at least my part of the deal, is pretty well finalised, and now just to get thru the day today. Tomorrow (Monday) is funeral day, 10am local time. The funeral itself won't be long, about 30 minutes. Will have to be out of the chapel within the hour. Tight scheduling of funerals for the day demands that we be through well before 11am. The wake will be held at Aunty and Uncle's place which is not far from Pinnaroo the funeral site. So hopefully will be home by early afternoon. I am still in shock and it still hadn't quite sunk in that Sally is truly gone, it is like a dark dream, it seems like someone else's funeral though I am the one making all the decisions being the nearest kin, and I be the one collecting the urn a few days later. I have changed the farewell song, it will now be "Made It Thru The Rain" by Barry Manilow, one of her fav artists. This is the song.....

The first two songs, Amarillo and Yellow Rose of Texas will still be played, and this is pretty well be it. Yesterday was pretty well my final preparation day. Also made up a tribute that will be read at the funeral, it incorporates a tribute sent to me by her son who is still back home in the States. So will not be making any more changes today except possibly minor changes in my part of the tribute (will not edit her son's tribute) if things comes to me. But I will be keeping myself busy most of the day today, unlike yesterday being the Jewish day of rest. Funeral day it turns out is on holocaust remembrance day, and one of the last things Sally did was investigate her ancestry and found that she is indeed partly Jewish.

I am back at work Wednesday and I will have to start dealing with the nitty gritty of the legalities associated with Sally's passing. She never gotten around to doing a will but then she doesn't own much, no company shares, no investments and no hidden riches. She has a bank account in the States which she receives installments of the court settlement from her first marriage, but her family friend in the States is also a signatory to the account and also her power of attorney so she will be able to deal with that side of things back in the States. Affairs here are I suppose left to me, and it is the great unknown to me, it will be a learning curve. The biggest issue is that the car license is in her name, that was done for the pensioner discount. I am not sure if the license will simply be transferred to me being her next of kin, or whether there are a lot of hoops to jump thru - knowing the govt system as I do around here I suspect the latter will be the case. We have a joint bank account which my wages goes into, I already informed Centerlink that Sally is deceased so hopefully the pension will have been stopped by now, will find out tomorrow which would have been her pension day. A couple of the bills are in her name again for the pensioner discounts.

The biggest thing a bit down the track is our lease on this house. The lease runs until October, then I guess I will have to decide whether I will remain the sole occupant of a 3-bedroom house on a 1/4 acre block of land or whether I will recommence my apartment lifestyle!! I heard it through the grapevine that the owner of this house has also passed away, so the landlord being the son of the owners may want to sell the house meaning I will have to move anyway. The reason why we have been renting this house in the first place is cos the spouse of the owner had passed away, so the remaining spouse had to move out and into a nursing home, and the son was given administration of the house - he being our landlord. Now the remaining owner has passed away, well I guess I shall wait and see how it all pans out. I will actually get advanced notice if the house will be sold. Our aircon broke down and the landlord wouldn't fix it cos it was out of warranty and not counted as an essential, much to Sally's annoyance cos due to her health she really needed an aircon. This past summer we just made do with fans and an evaporative cooler. However if sometimes in the next few months the landlord suddenly contacts me and inform me that he will get the aircon fixed I will take it as the sign that the house will be sold after the end of my lease!! I have been renting for as long as I care to remember, and so have learnt that when landlords starts to refurbish the property and repair non-essential broken items they are not doing it out of goodwill, they do it when they intend selling the property meaning we would have to move out!!

But whatever the lease runs until October so have plenty of time to get things organised in the house, deal with Sally's hoardings of half-finished craft projects, and etc. We have a housing crisis here with no end in sight, and so it will be difficult to find a new place, but it won't be nearly as difficult as it would have been if I still had Sally and her health issues therefore her specific requirements for a house, such as, on flat land, single storey, no stairs, bathroom rails installed, etc to deal with.

Meanwhile..... I am jumping ahead a bit.... first we just get through with the funeral......