Ghostly Martini - 05/18/2016 03:31 PM
Dear Ethel,
This response is in reference to your email dated May 17, 2016 7:32:36 PM, to inform you that your inquiry is still in review and will be responded to as soon as your concern has been resolved. We appreciate your patience during our review process.
There are instances in this life when automated email responses are nothing short of idiotic.
My mother's life was not complicated. No real estate. No car. No investment accounts. Not much actual stuff since she moved out of her own place in 2009 and lived with one or another of her children. All that's left is a small box (think of a shoe box that would house a large pair of boots) of keepsakes, a plastic file box, some costume jewelry, a tin of pretty postage stamps torn from years of mail, those damn rip-off "collector" coins, and some family photos.
She did, however work for a large municipality in a union job (she was a janitor and cleaned office buildings) and had a myriad of benefits. A small (really small)pension, a modest life insurance policy, supplemental health insurance (so pricey her pension didn't cover the cost) and a catastrophic health insurance policy that she also paid out of pocket for. She also had a small amount of money remaining in her credit union accounts with said large municipality. Are you counting? That makes five entities (from just this one job) I have notified regarding my mother's passing from this life into the next.
Things went swimmingly with the life insurance folks. So easily that I thought they might spread the word around since anything having to do with employee benefits pretty much begins with that same phone number. Like I thought the life insurance folks would let the pension folks know--hey heads up, stop paying this person her pension because she's dead. And then I thought that maybe when the pension checks stopped showing up in her credit union account, they might be like, uh, what's up? Nothing's happening here, did this person die? And when I stopped paying her insurance premiums, I thought that along with the fact I'd filed a life insurance claim....well, you get the picture. So that didn't happen and I made the appropriate phone calls, and sent in the appropriate forms, and yet the mail for the dead keeps coming. So yesterday I logged onto the website for her catastrophic insurance and sent them a message. And they got back to me. I hope they "resolve her concern." And I'm so glad they "appreciate her patience."
Is there anyone more patient than the dead?
