Getting ready

I'm getting dressed for the funeral. I haven't gotten any frantic phone calls, so I'm  hoping that that means that my sister & nephew got here ok (my aunt was supposed to have picked them up at the airport an hour or so ago) and that nothing else major has gone awry. I also hope I don't cry TOO too much. Y'all think good thoughts for us!

Lawyers and other fun stuff

chanfaina, or anybody else who has any idea about this - what's a reasonable amount to pay for an estate lawyer? This should be a relatively simple thing - everything is divided equally between my sister and me. There is a townhouse, and a reasonable (but not huge) amount of money that I believe is mostly in CDs. (To tell you the truth, I haven't even gotten as far as having a good idea how much money there is. I'm planning to get into that this weekend.) I'm just looking for a ballpark figure about what I can expect to pay. I am more or less intending to use the lawyer who drew up my mother's will - it's a firm that specializes in this stuff - but I would like to have some clue so I can know if they are overcharging me!


Well, the funeral is over. It wasn't as wrenching as I thought it might be. Attendance was quite good, although nobody did a headcount that I know of. I'd say there were at least a hundred people there, maybe more. A whole lot of teachers from Alvin showed up, including some people I hadn't seen in years and years, and one well into her 90s. A lot of the quilt guild showed up, as expected, and a couple of car-loads from her hometown, which is considerably further away. The service was very nice. We draped several of her quilts over the altar-rail, and people really seemed to like that. I teared up a couple of times, but never completely broke down, and neither did my sister. (We both tend to cry pretty easily, so we were both fairly surprised about this.)

The "coffee and pastries" which the church provided after the service turned out to be a pretty substantial spread. We brought more food home than we can ever possibly eat. We also brought home a number of nice plants. We jammed a couple of the big flower arrangements into the car, and took them by the nursing home on the way out. Somebody also sent a gorgeous heart-shaped wreath of yellow flowers - sunflowers and roses and other stuff - that we left at the church because we couldn't figure out what else to do with it. (We couldn't even get it off of the stand so we couldn't see how we could put it into a car at all!)

We pulled all the cards off of the flowers, of course, but now I can't figure out how to word the thank-you notes if I don't know who sent which one. Can I say "thank you for the lovely arrangement" if it was a plant? Some of you smart people, help me out here.


Overall, it was really a pretty overwhelming day. It was almost like being the bride, in the sense that I was the person everybody wanted to talk to. Y'all remember that feeling? You can't sit down because you keep having to stop to talk to people? My sister came in for a lot of it, too, of course - but I got more because I knew more people than she did. Everybody loved my mother, they really did - and it was wonderful hearing all that, but ultimately also really, really exhausting. I told my boss (who was there, as were several of my coworkers and ex-coworkers) that I would probably come in tomorrow, but maybe not until after lunch. I need a rest.