Debts to society

My mother believed, until the very end, that she'd make it out on her own again. She tried to sock away as much as she could of her government benefit checks. Paying the rent at her adult homes ate nearly the entire amount and was painful, every single time. There were a couple of times that the government didn't immediately catch on that she'd gone in-patient, and an extra check was sent. So she'd accumulated a bit of money.

A few months before she died, we convinced her to write me a check for $2500 out of her account, so that she wouldn't lose her benefits. I don't know how much was in the account when she died. The bank wouldn't tell me without proof that I was executrix, and she (of course!) had no will.

Back in November 2004, I tried to file the paperwork for people who die without wills. The county insisted on getting a copy of her divorce decree. I wrote away to a Prothonotary in Pennsylvania, and discovered that she wasn't divorced—hadn't been divorced?—it was his idea, I think—until 1969, when she was pregnant with me. (They hadn't lived together, or even seen each other, for at least 5 years by then.)

In mid-August I flew to Weatherwood with the baby, without Beaker. Rented a car. Miss T. was tense and weepy the whole time. I think she could feel my unhappiness being there. I lay in bed at nights plotting out blog entries about what an IDIOT my uncle is, about how No-Exit-y the entire situation in that apartment is. I spent my days listening to each of the three occupants, one at a time. Marina worried about whether my uncle is not only an idiot, but a dnagerous controlling idiot—he feels threatened by her going for a GED. My grandmother is old and frail and in pain and hates everyone, except occasionally Ricky—he's all right when he feeds her fears. And Ricky himself, always confused about the news but angry nonetheless.

But on my last afternoon I managed to make it back to the county probate department, divorce decree in hand, to be declared executrix. Look, I know it doesn't matter; there can't be more than $1000 in the account. But I didn't want it to get swallowed by the bank, or the state, or whoever gets accounts abandoned by dead people. I figured we could toss whatever scraps are there into Miss T.'s college account, and let that be a gesture from Annajane to the granddaughter she thought we didn't even want.

There was an extra little twist—the estate account had to be at an in-state bank—but I managed to get that opened before we got on the plane.

Flash foward. Back in Ohinidinois, classes starting, outbuildings falling down, Miss T. eating everything in sight and scooting fast enough that we're starting to babyproof, busy ordinary life. And then a giant envelope arrives, registered mail, from the county Social Services department.

It's a bill, to my mother's estate, for some $360,000, addressed to me as executrix. It cost over $9.00 to mail, thanks to the enclosed printouts listing every single Medicaid charge from 1996 on.

The bulk are hospitalization charges—some $280,000. There's medication, there's outpatient care. One can see the physical complaints—all minor, though—accumulating in her last few months.

Oddly (even to me), opening the envelope didn't raise my adrenaline level at all. I understand that Republicans expect the government to try to make this sort of recovery—and that families with more money and accountants and lawyers and shit counter-scheme, to try to keep money for the descendants. I have faith (and even more after talking with my lawyer father-in-law) that they're not actually billing me.

My own debt to various institutions, what with the undergraduate financial aid and the many years of graduate fellowships, and the illegally cross-border high school education too, that (adjusted for inflation) totals in the mid-six-figures.

This new bill just quantifies another portion of what society has given, that's enabled me to enter and remain in the comfortable middle class. First an education, and later the (at least professional, if often impersonal and sometimes unpleasant) care that my mother required. Both were necessary to where I've ended up.

But if the debt ate at me, if I felt honestly guilty all the time, I wouldn't be able to function.

Comments

[Jody]

I don't think you should feel the slightest bit guilty. I think a better society wouldn't send such a bill to your mother's estate at all.

[Laurie]

Guilt should definitely not be one of the emotions. Anger at $9 wasted. Anger at the bullshit that governments do to people. Take care of yourself!