Lost my only sibling yesterday.

[woodsprite]

11. Thank you for letting me dump all those mixed emotions.

I know he's where he wanted to be. I also know that we're now having to deal with all that he wouldn't (which he thought was hilarious). Wish I could just walk away from my niece and nephew, but I wouldn't do that. I'll just have to keep riding that rail between needy relatives and my hubby. Everybody needs money for everything (gas, food, transportation, etc.), nobody has a decent job, and the first of the bills from the funeral home came in - $700 for body removal.

We go to the funeral home with his kids tomorrow morning. I'm taking my husband since he has a stronger hold on the purse strings and can't be as easily coerced as I can, and truthfully my nieces and nephew respect him more and won't try to push while he's around. We're planning cremation, a small service (family and a few friends only), then a light meal to send people on their way. I don't know if my brother gets a death benefit or not from either SS or his railroad pension. I know he opted not to receive SS payments when he retired because he was told that amount would be deducted from his monthly RR pension payment. He figured that the railroad pension is based on congress' retirement plan and they'd be less likely to mess with it than straight SS. I don't know if SS gives a death benefit if you didn't take SS payments. I imagine he had to pay into it for all of his life, so I would think there would be some kind of death benefit, but I'm not sure. I'll start by asking the funeral director tomorrow.

I keep saying to myself "This too shall pass". It might feel like trying to pass a 12mm kidney stone right now, but at some point we'll be on the other side of all this.