the shouting part

i survived the viewing, the funeral, the reading of the will, the sticky-filthy carpet of our hotel room, the lack of sleep, being snubbed by my determined aunt and my passive-and-therefore-complicit extended family, and watching milo getting clocked in the face with a hardcover book by his cousin - although that last one broke my heart in a million pieces, to see the look of shock and then betrayal on his little face; it felt like he lost a little of his innocence in that moment.

what still has me reeling is going through the nightmare of my dad's office, with 40 years' accumulation of things that meant everything to my dad but very little to us. we filled two dozen garbage bags with junk: clippings from small-town newspapers' "around town" columns, wedding ceremonies he had performed, spreadsheets listing what his parishoners had contributed in the weekly offering, sunday school lesson books from the 70s, letters from traveling evangelists wanting to hold revival meetings at his church, and thousands and thousands of pages of barely funny pictures and off-color jokes printed off the internet. mixed in with the junk was an alarming number of personal documents: bank and investment statements, car titles, insurance policies, receipts for improvements on his rental properties, ancient family photographs, collection notices, medical bills - it was surreal. besides a dozen full file drawers, there were stacks of files piled under his desk, and none of them made any sense. a file labeled "vacation bible school" could contain a ticket stub from a mission trip to mexico, a funeral notice, a copy of a daily newsletter from a vacation bible school in 1982, a couple of sermons, a printed e-mail from his college roommate containing some disgusting joke about jesse jackson, and a list of his denomination's church locations in, say, new hampshire.

apparently, the biggest part of my inheritance is that i'm a slumlord now, although my siblings and i are committed to getting out of the slumlord business as soon as possible. i, for one, don't have the energy one needs to be a really good slumlord. meanwhile, there's ongoing drama between my aunt (who's the executor of my dad's will) and my dad's wife about his other, non-slum assets, which the aunt is determined must go to us. i will be glad when it's over and we can set milo up with a nice educational trust fund and be done with it. i need a good long nap. or a weekend in mexico. fortunately, we're going to barcelona in a couple of weeks. it won't be a moment too soon.