A whirlwind

I didn't have time to choose and edit photos and then write a blog post yesterday. The level of activity around here rose to a crescendo. My sister and I had a 9:00 a.m. appointment at the county courthouse in Beaufort to sign some papers there having to do with one of my dearly departed mother's bank accounts and the title to her car.

We ran into a cousin I hadn't seen in years. She was at the courthouse doing much the same things we were doing because her sister, Judy, passed away just two or three weeks before our mother did. It was like a family reunion during this period of mourning. We all grew up together and then went our separate ways.

 It's raining here at the retirement complex this morning. Let's hope it doesn't rain all day.

Other administrative chores took us to two banks over the course of the morning. Documents delivered to us by the estates office required notarized signatures, and there were complications. They finally found resolution. We sat in another bank for more than an hour while my mother's accounts there were closed out. Everything seemed to be moving at a snail's pace.

In the afternoon, another cousin I hadn't seen in 50 years came to my mother's apartment to get reacquainted with my sister and me and to reminisce about MA. He stayed until after five o'clock. At that point, my sister, yet another cousin, and a good friend informed me that we were going to a restaurant for supper. I ended up not getting back to MA's apartment before 10:30 p.m.

Today we will be hosting an open house/visitation here at the retirement complex. We don't know how many people to expect — 50, 100, maybe 200. The woman who lives across the hall, somebody I've known all my life, arranged for the Baptist church's benevolence committee to bring in food for the crowd. More cousins and old friends I haven't seen in decades have said they'll be there. And then we'll go out to dinner with some of them again tonight. I feel like I've been caught up in whirlwind.