Day 220 - Sadmin

 

Dealing with my brother’s affairs continues to be difficult. He didn’t leave a will and that has made things twice as hard to organise.

It has been a steep learning curve for me. The hardest were the immediate months after my brother died in which we had to get the death certificate and make sure that all of his possessions were out of his rented house (which was some distance away) while I had a painful arm. A painful arm is not necessary during this time. I still have things to move from his studio and to deal with a lot of his other affairs.

I’m not sure what I can say that would be helpful to anyone going through a similar thing. Some weeks I would be spending a lot of the time on the phone and writing emails informing people about Ad’s death. It was important to have more than one copy of the death certificate.

The people on the other end of the phone and emails tended to be dedicated bereavement teams and, on the whole, they were sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry for your loss’, they would always begin and usually they were considerate.

The learning curve for me was in finding out how things worked. Especially the legal side. Some things were counterintuitive and seemed strange to me. The numerous laws and policies regarding what happens when a family member dies. I questioned the wisdom of many of them.

So, I printed off a sheet and tried to tick through each task one by one, from arranging to get a death certificate through to dealing with my brother’s digital legacy. I still do not have access to his Facebook page. I was, and to an extent, still am, not in a state in which it is easy to organise my thoughts and all of the things which I had (and have) to do. Without the loving support of my wife, family and friends, I would have been flailing.

Some companies were better than others. Tesco had good policies – they even went so far as to transfer my brother’s Clubcard points across to us. I’m not sure why my brother, never well off, didn’t use his Clubcard points. His phone company EE also had a very kind policy in which they waived the right to demand the rest of the money for his phone purchase tariff. I found such things encouraging.

Other places were more difficult to deal with. I struggled (and am still in the process of closing down my brother’s bank accounts) – the banks seemed to make it deliberately hard. All the time I would find myself getting stuck on some AI chatbot which simply refused to put me through to a real person. None of them wanted me to physically write to them beyond sending them identity documents.

The Government’s ‘Tell Us Once’ service was okay and better than nothing, but didn’t seem to stop Government related post (which was redirected) from coming through. HMRC are being particularly unhelpful and demanding repayment for a tax credits overpayment. A council tax overpayment also had to be repaid. The irony is that my brother kept scrupulous records of his self-employed art business, even keeping every single receipt. I think he feared that the tax people would penalise him if he did not defend himself in every way possible. They still want money – of which my brother had very little. Where the other organisations showed practical compassion, the Government liked to stick to the letter of the law and pursued their legal rights, down to asking for owed pennies back. One bill was for £1.63p.

Getting access to my brother’s Google account and email were the most helpful things and I am savvy enough to manage most of that. He still gets scam emails every day. There is no point trying to unsubscribe from them as it just alerts the scammers that the account is still active and they would send more.

I still have so much to do and at times it is difficult and frustrating. It is not something which someone who is grieving should have to deal with. They call it sadmin – literally sad admin. It’s time consuming and onerous.

The main thing that I have found helpful is to break each task down into smaller tasks and to keep a file of all the things that I have to do. And to take breaks, simply for my mental health.

I always felt sorry for grieving families who kept getting post and email to their dead relatives. But it happens so regularly that, for me, in the context of all the other things that have to be done, I’ve simply got used to it.

Of course, my faith has an influence on real life matters and real life events have an influence on my faith. They are not separate compartments. And, as ever, I am often appalled by what God allows. It really is ongoing. The prayer strike, the sadmin… all of it.

If the Government, including the tax office, really is under God’s control, as the Bible says, then he needs to make them repent.