What am I doing here. I was this close to rescinding my application.
I'm back at work this week after my family vacation. Just like I thought, family picture night was particularly emotional. My sister about had a complete breakdown when my cousins kids wouldn't behave to take a group photo. That was one thing my mom was always the biggest pain in the ass about, and I think maybe only me and my nana were thinking about it aside from my sister but as soon as she started crying my cousins and everyone else realized exactly why. But it's pretty goddamn difficult to wrangle four kids from ages three to seven to stand still for pictures. We spent a while after we finally got done just sitting there, the few of us that were the closest to her. Mom's mom, her sister and her two kids. There wasn't anything to say. We just held hands and cried. It wasn't the only night of the week that got me but it was probably the worst.
The other moment that will stay with me is the morning we were packing up to leave. It's always a production to pack that house up, because check out time is early and it was an hour earlier this year thanks to extra COVID cleaning measures before the next rental family could be allowed in. So even though we stayed up late drinking and remeniscing we were up at the crack of dawn cleaning and packing. But I got to pull rank, so to speak, and spend an hour of that time just holding the baby. She's my niece and she's only three months old and it's completely probable that I won't see her again for another year, so nobody fought me on it. She cries if you stand still but she loves it if you just walk around, so that's all I did, I walked around the main room while everyone packed up around me. She quieted down, she cooed and then she fell asleep in my arms. I just about lost it. The fact that my mom isn't here to hold this baby, and to see me holding this baby and be so, so happy about all of it is killing me. I went out to the deck so I could hold the baby and quietly cry without disturbing the process of packing up, but my sister caught me and she came and cried too and we just cried together because there's nothing to say. What can you say? She's going to raise such an amazing daughter and her daughter is going to have so many amazing opportunities because of what mom left to us, but we'd trade it to have her back in a heartbeat.
Today I was back at work and I had a ton of meetings and conference calls all day, but I had to be mentally present for my sister and my aunt too. My aunt was taking my mom's car to carmax and other places to try to get the best deal we could get for it. We could probably get more from a private sale, but it's not fair to make my aunt do that and neither my sister nor I can go to Florida to deal with any of this stuff right now, so we took a sale price that we know is probably at best half of what mom paid for the damn thing. It's a stupid fancy convertible, she bought it after the divorce when another divorcee in town took her out to the car dealerships so she'd have a man with her and feel more secure about things, but it ended up making her buy a fancy car she didn't need. Life is so stupid. We can't take this car, but we can't get it's worth out of it either. Oh well.
My uncle somehow used his connections to get us through Florida probate court with the house in absolute record time. It's supposed to take six to nine months, he flexed on some judge's secretary and boom it's done with. We can put the house on the market. But that just opens up a whole nother round of emotional shit. She hated that house. We hate that house. We can't go to Florida right now it's a pandemic red zone. So what I live in another red zone. I don't want to go back into that house, no one does. My aunt and my nana have to because they're there and they're taking care of getting it staged for sale. But we thought we would have half a year at least to get ready to do this and now it's on us. Thanks for getting the rush job, that's amazing, but also fuck. What are we doing. What are we doing with this damn house? I feel so bad, my sister is named the executrix in the will because when the will was written five years ago she lived close by to my mom and I lived far away. But then mom moved to Florida and we both lived far away, and she never changed the will so my sister is stuck with all the legal bullshit and I'm spared so much and just have to send text messages saying, "Yeah, that sounds good, I think you're making the right move, I trust your judgement." What a load of crap. I'm the older kid it should be me regardless of the sexist side of things. I wouldn't have been any good at it and she's probably better equipped but I should be the one dealing with it. But I can't even deal with the financial adviser about the investment account. I still haven't set up the call I need to have with him about it. The account is split and it's in my name now but I haven't done anything I need to do with it. That makes it real.
What am I doing here? Somebody just tell me what I'm doing here.