PAPERWORK (2)

I think that I may already have mentioned how much I despise doing paperwork, especially when it's paperwork that I simply don't understand like the increasing mountain of stuff that seems to have appeared since we started going through mum's papers over the last couple of weeks.

The general feeling that I don't know what to do and that somehow I ought to be doing something is really starting to trigger such severe overnight panic attacks that I'm no longer sleeping, and every time I try to make a start on it, the sheer volume of it just causes another meltdown and, in the end, nothing gets done.

That, coupled with the fact that every time I even do get hold of a daunting and very official looking form, it turns out that I can't even tick box number one until I get details from another piece of paperwork which I may or may not yet have, means that the panic spiral builds up so high, that I shove it back in the bag and go off into a corner to whimper again.

And there's the constant sense that other people are waiting for me to do something, whilst I am waiting for them to do something so that I can do my something, and I don't understand any more whose something we're all waiting for. I have forms that I can't fill in from the solicitors, but the solicitors are supposed to contact me about some details about instigation of probate, although it's far more likely that I was supposed to contact them and they're waiting for me to complete the forms which I can't complete without the details from them.

Meanwhile, more and more bills continue to roll in which I'm supposed to hand on to the people dealing with the probate which, in the end, might just turn out to be me after all, but I don't know where I can send them, or even if I can send them until I know what the procedure is supposed to be, despite the fact that it all sounded so simple when it was first explained to me and that I'd actually have to do very little myself.

Well, at least I'm getting that bit right.

But believe me when I tell you that I think I'm on the brink of having a total breakdown over this.

Somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, which is, incidentally, still genuine chaos given that the house is still in a complete shambles from the builders being here because we've not had any time since to sort any of that out under the circumstances, a vast wodge of paperwork arrived about my own pension and accidentally got mixed in with the many envelopes pouring in about my mother, and, when I did find it, seemed to be written in such bewildering financial gobbledegook that I couldn't make head nor tail of it and quietly slipped it back inside the envelope and chose to ignore it until another time, or until the people who are so desperate for me to complete that actually provide me with a simple summary that I can finally understand.

I don't remember being aware of anything like this amount of stuff on previous occasions when family members passed away. It all seemed to go so damned smoothly, and all that people seemed to do was right "Thank You" cards to the appropriate people. This means, of course, that any and all of the current and ensuing chaos must be all my own fault and I'm going to get blamed when everything goes wrong and the financial burdens which already seem to be approaching numbers far beyond my own tiny annual salary will come slamming down upon me and leave me responsible for a mountain of debt that I am unable to service and it all, quite frankly, terrifies me...