Even Probate Ends

We've all heard stories about what it's like to go through Probate Court. It is unnecessarily long and drawn out. It takes a month to get an hour's work done. It is frustrating and depressing. It is expensive. And it is likely to generate friction between people who ordinarily would have behaved amicably. It is a very poor way to follow the death of a loved one. If all the anger and anxiety and helplessness experienced during the probate process could be focused in a single day, it would be as devastating as the death itself. It would be kinder, though, than dragging it out.

Even when it ends it ends slowly, first with one signature, then weeks later another, and then months later with a sheaf of papers. My own poor adventure through the probate system ended yesterday with the arrival of a single, small piece of paper. I knew beforehand that this moment would merit a celebration. When the moment came, though, I didn't know how to celebrate. I couldn't think of a single act that would be meaningful. Over the months-long course of the probate process, I had become numb, zombified. It is this numbness I must now shake.

The process began in the first weeks of the year and moved forward, albeit at a glacial pace, until mid-year. Then the other people involved, for reasons that I imagine seemed valid enough to them, became non-communicating non-contributors. I waited literally months for them to stir to life, but it never took place. My own patience, which in my estimate had been prodigious until now, was exhausted. Finally I rattled a few cages, the sleepers awakened, and the entire stultifying process was concluded in two weeks.

Another person might have walked through this without batting an eye. I couldn't. I was still in shock from my mother's death when the probate process began, and I stayed that way. Now it's time for me to rattle my own cage, and awaken from my own sleep. Now. It feels good to say the word.

This should be interesting.