February 5th is the birthday of two of my favorite people — my mom being one of them. Mom would have turned 85 yesterday but she passed away 21 years ago, on January 9th. I should have been with her when she died and I wasn’t. Don’t make my mistake; it’s something that I’ll regret until my memories leave me.
This morning, the Vietnam Veteran’s Association came to the house to take 5 boxes and 4 bags of stuff. Every day I go through a drawer or a box or a closet. It’s wrenching and confusing and, well, funny. I just sorted a bunch of cords and connectors into different containers — like new Hogwarts students into their houses. [Puts on sorting hat] Ah, HDMI, yes, I see, diligent, practical … yes, yes, “Digital Device to TV” container (other connectors in the container cheer).
Ken was notoriously bad at cord management. His strategy was to shove loose cords into a big container and put them into a cupboard — problem solved. I found 5 bins of cords — no exaggeration — and when next I see him, I am going to tease him so hard about that. So, anyway, now that they are sorted, we are on a treasure hunt of sorts to figure out what they all connect to. Some of them are just HDMI precursors but there is also a mysteriously large number of AC adapters. I sure hope one of them is the plug for the portable car battery charger!
One of the closets I have started to dig into is Ken’s clothes. Anyone who knew Ken, knows that he was very particular about his attire. So, it should come as no surprise that he had three or four times the amount of clothing that I have, maybe more. I’m kind of a “what’s clean?” person. He was more of a “what feels right today” person. This alone is why I never bought him clothes. Occasionally, his kids could buy him something that he’d like but I was never attuned to his preferences. His friends might say his preferences ran toward “tan dockers and a blue polo shirt” which on the face of it is accurate. In fact, he owned at least two dozen blue polo shirts, in different shades, textures, fabrics, cuts, all of them in regular use.
Ken also owned 13 different white shirts. He was always looking for the “right” white shirt but never did find it. That did not undermine the worth of those 13 white shirts, though. He wore them; he was just never quite satisfied. Over the weekend, I opened his closet door and pushed my face into all those shirts (they smelled like moth balls and laundry soap). Then, I took them off their hangers, folded them, and placed them into bags; and this morning, the VVA picked them up with the other donations. The blue polo shirts (and that ridiculous purple polo that matches his lunch bag) will have to hang there a little longer.
For all you (older) music lovers, Ken was also a collector of really great music. Somehow, he just seemed to stumble upon it, long before the internet was there to give us ratings and opinions. We still have more than 1,000 CDs from his weekend trips to Record Rama and vacation stops at used CD stores (book stores too but we’ll talk about the hundreds and hundreds of books some other time!). We don’t even listen to CDs anymore but it is hard to part with them. It’s hard to part with anything that his hands once held, to be honest. We’re selling off the “hard to find” CDs. Turns out that those are worth a lot of money — I mean $30 as opposed to $1, so don’t get too excited about what’s hiding in your old CD collections! Some things, like the autographed Steve Roach album from the concert we went to in Philadelphia in 1993 or ’94, will stay with us but I am happy that some of these CDs will end up in the hands of another collector who will value the music as he did.
I got a bill from Allegheny Health Network at the beginning of January. It was $411 for services Ken received on January 6, 2017 and a new responsibility of -$335 (yes, a negative $335 for what?), which seems like a total of $76, though the total on the bill was $411. I called and asked how much I actually owed them. The customer service rep and I laughed about the math but she was unsure what to do. She told me that she’d have to do some research and talk to her supervisor. She’d call me back. Of course, she didn’t. I forgot about it for a bit and didn’t call again until mid-January. The lady I talked to said she couldn’t talk to me unless I could prove that I “was the estate.” Not being sure what she needed, I asked what proof that would be. Did she need details about Ken’s illness? I told her what services he received on January 6, 2017 (it was his birthday, he was in the hospital with pneumonia, the nurses brought him cake and sang to him while I cried). I reminded her that I know everything, that I had all the EOBs, that I just wanted a dollar amount so I could write a check.
I wish this were hyperbole but she actually told me to hire an attorney to write a letter telling them that I was “the estate.” I politely (I know, I know, you’re thinking that I wasn’t very polite but I swear that I was) told her that I would not be paying an attorney $250/hour to convince Allegheny Health Network that I am allowed to pay them. I asked her to have a supervisor call me. She agreed; we parted company. No one called me. I called again a week later. The representative, Jamie, must have had a bad day. She was … unfriendly … from the very beginning of the call. She said that my case had been reviewed and that I owed nothing. I asked her to clarify and she said, “the amount due is zero.” That was the whole call. She didn’t explain why it was zero, she didn’t apologize for the three phone calls I had to make to find out I owed them nothing. It’s hard to explain how angry I am about that whole experience. Why is the amount zero? Why didn’t they call me back EVER? Why did they treat me like a nuisance instead of a customer? Who else have they treated like this?
If you’ve forgotten that your customers are people, you shouldn’t have customers.
Peace.
