(8th Post) October arrives and I spent it in my home state visiting my kids and their busy families. Watched the grandkids’ football games. Celebrated birthdays, decorated for Halloween, and spent time with the grandkids. Had a great time and I’m keeping the stories and memories for own.

While I was in Michigan, I finalized my folk’s final estate. Another door closed and complete. The time and money to pay fees & paperwork administering even the littlest of details is mind blowing.  It doesn’t matter how much or how little a person has in the end, making the decisions of what they wanted and having a will that was so basic and outdated was frustrating. Just trying to get it done, and just wanted to make it fair.

The state of Michigan probate courts and rules work for the state and the lawyers and not much for the people. To get a simple question answered you had to go through a ridiculous amount of phone calls to people who should know the answer but will pass the question onto the next person. Hours and hours on the phone just to fined out if I could file their probate small estate forms which included property in another county, at Ingham county probate court – which it should, since that’s the county she died in, and according to all the state rules and laws that’s where it should be filed. And yet it took forever for them to decide that…of course, they added, you should pay for a lawyer to make sure. Which would cost more than what the estate is worth. No offense to lawyers, but what a racket! End of rant.

October should have been relaxing, but I found myself flustered again. I loved being around my family but felt back on the treadmill. Wasn’t sure why until I came across a story online that described how I felt.

The Unbalanced Washing Machine story by Dr. Bertice Berry.

I found Dr. Berry on Facebook telling stories. Look her up and take a listen sometime. She’s funny, thoughtful, amazing and tells great stories on life. One morning I opened Facebook and this is the story she told. The Unbalanced Washing Machine. She talked about how her daughter would come home to do her laundry and would try to do it all in one load – into her brand-new washer. Dr Berry described her new washer and how quiet and well run it was. However, as her daughter kept overloading the machine (she called her one-load!) the machine would get off balance and be really loud. After a while, she found that even when she put in a really light load, the machine would still sound off balanced and loud. In other words, when you’ve been carrying a heavy load for so long, when life finally lightens up, you can still feel off balance. It takes time to recalibrate and find balance in your life.

Makes sense, after caregiving for so many years and 24/7 care in the last few years – on top of everything else I had going on, it was a heavy load which became my norm. Even though the responsibility is gone and I’m free…it still felt as though I was carring it all.

Time to recalibrate with another adventure.