What People Leave by Margaret Ullrich

Paul's parents had set up their affairs very well. My parents didn't.

We're slowly getting used to our new situation. My brother George lived with our parents all his life and he's sorting out the paperwork. He was just beginning to see the end of the work from our Pop's death in January. Then Ma died in October, a week after her 87th birthday. He wrote us:


I'm slowly getting used to the house being empty and quiet.

It's a long day. I usually get up at 4:30 a.m. I'm at work by 5:30 a.m. On a good day I'm out by 4:00 p.m., but usually I get out by 6:00 p.m. By the time I get home, cook dinner, clean up, I'm ready to crash and go to bed.

Well, maybe that's a good thing. Keeping busy at work takes my mind off of Mom and Pop's death. I'm also still working on getting my house ready to move into. Between working on that house and doing the maintenance on these houses, that pretty much keeps me busy during the weekend.


We hope George will be able to take better care of himself now, too. He's had a rough time of it since the century began. He had to go to the Towers on 9/11. He saw people jumping while the Towers burned. During the past 7 years he also had to take our parents to all their doctors' appointments.


We're learning about settling estates from friends who are also former Americans. Our friend Roger was from Brooklyn. He had to settle his Dad's estate, and he explained the procedure:

We get the wills and the papers and show them to our investment advisor for the financial aspect and the lawyer for the legal aspect of the situation. After our lawyer has a chance to go through everything, then she'll get in touch with the estate's lawyer. There's no point for them to talk now since our lawyer hasn't seen anything.


It's a slow process, but I'm sure it will sort itself out.