Life goes on

My current life

Paperwork surely was created to keep your mind off weightier matters. Still, it is maddening.

I called AT&T, one of the world's most screwed-up companies, to tell them Mom had died and consequently didn't need cell service any more (hadn't used it anyway for years), and the guy said he would text a code to her phone to prove that I was who I was.

"I don't have her phone. She hasn't used a phone in a long time."

He had to find a supervisor. Finally they worked out that I had to go to an AT&T outlet with Mom's death certificate and show it to an employee, who would then call them to say that it was true, she was dead.

Have you ever been to an AT&T outlet?

People stand around in a sickeningly orange room waiting for service while the three ill-kempt tech-heads who work there all congregate around one particularly thorny problem that none of them knows how to solve, and you slowly die as the minutes tick away.

I waited and waited. I used a bathroom marked with the universal bathroom sign, and was told when I came out, "That bathroom isn't for public use."

"Well I used it," I said.

It took about an hour, two-thirds of the three-man staff and three phone calls to the "Customer Loyalty Department," but I finally got it done. They make it purposely hard to end an account, even in the case of a death, but they sure are excited to sign you up for new one.

So that's one account ended, about six to go. At the same time I'm dealing with her lawyer and other professionals in this strange realm to figure out what goes where.

Mom is out there somewhere. In her last few years, none of this meant anything to her and, in that way, at least, she was at peace.