What you need to know if a loved one dies?

[cadydid]

I can not begin to tell you how important these things are.. a lesson I learned the hard way.

My parents were in a car accident that took my father's life and put my mom on life support for 6 weeks and in the hospital a total of 3 months. I'm the second of 4 kids and none of us had a clue. We knew nothing and had access to nothing. We had to pool money to pay for the funeral because the life insurance paid out to my mom, and we couldn't access the accounts for 6 weeks after the funeral.

We didn't know if my father wanted to be buried or cremated. 4 kids ages 34 to 27 and you would have thought that we were 5 year olds with the way that we going through things.

And whatever you do, please put in your will, please state who you want things to go to. While everything was planned for my mom, that was not. And it caused a lot of bad feelings between my sister and I and our brothers. To this day, my brothers and I really dont talk other than playing nice in front of the kids.

 

[DDD]

You are totally right about identifying which child gets what. It really should be distributed to all the adult kids long before the end. Never, ever, ever did I think there would be "issues" between the four siblings but boy was I wrong. I think "memories" and "love" get transferred mentally into special things. For example, my older sister gave my older brother Mom's diamond rings and told him "Mom told me she wanted your son to have these." Well...............that had been true before that son got into drugs etc. The attorney required that I get the rings back from my brother who lived many states away so I could follow the list Mom left.

Another sister and her husband took furniture out of the house with-o my knowledge. Yikes!

I'm going to divy up stuff this year and make sure it is attached to the will. I know which of the six kids I want to receive what I consider to be special. Not particularly valuable, lol, but special in my eyes. DDD

 

[cadydid]

I mentioned this post to mother in law when I talked to her on the phone earlier and she told me what I think is a great idea.

Her mother, when it was discovered that she had terminal cancer, went to the store and purchased packages of multi colored sticky dots (like the ones you see at garage sales). She went through the house and on all of the furniture, other large items, and collectibles, she placed a color dot representing who she wanted the item to go to, and then wrote down who was what color and put the list in her jewelry box. Only problem is she did not tell anyone that she had done this.

So when she passed away, when they went to the house, they see all these colored dots, sometimes one sometimes 2 or even three on things and had no idea what it meant until they looked in jewelry box and found the list of colors vs, names. There she had put a color dot on the paper and wrote a name next to it. And it all made sense.. single dots were for her kids, double dots were for grand kids, and triple dots for rgeat grand kids.

I think it is a great idea.. thinking about doing it in our house.. I know it would have helped a ton if my mom had done it.

 

[Ropefree]

One of the most beautiful things I have seen in my life is a rosary that was made from the costume jewelry after her death by her daughter.
When I saw it I felt that this is the way to give the members of the family something that they can hold onto and reflect on the gifts the life of a mother brings to life.