#or sometimes when a friend asks for an update to make a dying whale noise and scare an old lady standing behind us in the checkout line

[spoopy-action-at-distance]

Dealing with your dead parent's financial mess sure is An Experience. It's 50% stress, 50% complex collaborative problem-solving, and 50% feeling like you're in the audience of a convoluted and absurd comedy skit that keeps throwing up punchline after punchline.

In six months, I went from someone who had a reasonably well-to-do parent who I was estranged from for the sake of my wellbeing, and whose inheritance I was thinking of refusing to spare myself the family infighting, to being the one who has to juggle several debtors, thousands of euros' worth of someone else's debts, several institutions who don't communicate with each other half the time, and the additional surprise paperwork generated by everyone else involved having signed themselves the fuck out of this mess. I wasn't prepared for how complicated the bureaucratic aftermath of a death would be on a good day, and I certainly wasn't prepared for the bureaucratic bog that is the death of someone whose main response to financial problems had apparently been "I'm not paying for that" for several years.

Thank heavens that debt isn't automatically inheritable in my country, and thank fuck there was nothing substantial to inherit there. At the moment I'm basically an unpaid case manager who will not become personally responsible for his case's liabilities as long as he does everything by the book. Also the book was written by someone who didn't quite realise that a case like this could happen. The standard assumption within the public system seems to be that an estate will have some debt and some funds, and likely end up on the black side of the ledger. No one tells you that sometimes you will get a bit of a clown car parade instead.

Someone suggested that once I'm done, I ought to write How To Deal With The Indebted Estate You Inherited When You're Fucking Broke And Everyone Else Has Fucked Off: The Authoritative Blog Post. I said that I doubt I have a comprehensive understanding of the issue. "You think someone does?" they countered. They work within public bureaucracy, so I'm inclined to believe they know what they're on about.

If I do write that blog post, it's gonna come with a soundtrack of a techno Can Can version of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, the musical staple of Very Stupid Drama of the Week Explained in a Tumblr Video, with the following caption: "for full immersive experience, imagine that the manic bass beat is a hammer swinging wildly in the immediate vicinity of your head. You're entirely fine because it hasn't hit you. Yet."

#parental death #this is me right now #I'm living a disconcerting stand-up skit that has so many layers that it has gone the full circle via unfunny to being funny again #this ride has an expiration date but until it arrives my choices are basically to keep dodging and to either cry or bitch or laugh about it #or sometimes when a friend asks for an update to make a dying whale noise and scare an old lady standing behind us in the checkout line #seriously people if you have a financially unstable parent and the option to legally renounce any and all inheritance is available to you #do give it some Grave and Careful Consideration even before they die #trying to protect family honour isn't worth it because NO ONE'S gonna come out of this kinda thing without looking like a bit of an idiot #and the clown car ride might sometimes be funny but it might also give you brand new stress-related diseases