The Power of Paper

Spring break has come and gone. I didn't get as much done around the house as I was planning, but I got some plants in the ground, whipped up a scarf, and then spent the latter half of the week hanging out with college friends and my family.

Anselm Kiefer "book with wings"
at Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art

Last week I spent the bulk of my time fighting any number of financial foes in my attempts to get our accounts in order, but the absence of the allusive death certificate has been more than a problem. I've, on several occasions, thought that if I could just get the damn certificate all of this would be easier to handle, because then at least I could move beyond the paperwork road block.

Today, after 5 weeks, I received the call from the funeral home that the death certificates had arrived and would I like them to mail them or would I be picking them up. It would be just my luck that if they even entered the mail system, no one would ever see them again, and I'd be back at square one. No sir, I would definitely be picking them up.

Band rehearsal was at 4:30. If I drove really fast I could make it down to the funeral home and back in time. And so I found myself at 3:45, rushing down I-35, relieved that at least I wasn't still waiting on the one paper that rules them all, zig-zagging between cars in a way I know my mother would frown upon, all to make it to the funeral home to sign my name on yet another dotted line... Finally...

When I got there, I was met at the door by a short, balding man with a heavy lisp. He seemed suspect when I told him I was there to pick up a death certificate. Apparently that is not protocol. I guess everyone else just paces by the mailbox for some indiscriminate amount of time. When I told him it was for Roger his tone changed. They were expecting me... I suppose that when you call and email a funeral home regularly, you make an impact on the directors. Again, not protocol, but then again none of my life this last year has followed protocol.

I had no idea how emotional I would get signing for a piece of paper. It's just paper. Something about seeing his name on that piece of paper though brought a new level of reality to it all.

It's official. It's legal.

I cried while I signed my name and wrote "wife" where it asked my relationship. I wondered if other people cry when they pick up a death certificate. Maybe that's why they wait behind the security of the mailbox.

So now I have this piece of paper that I have angrily been waiting to receive so that I can distribute them to the powers that be so I can gain access to accounts I should have had access to anyway... and now I don't want to mail them because it makes it official. It makes it legal. And it makes him a little more gone.

No project today. Just therapy.