My brother lived a pretty simple life, and being pretty pragmatic, he invested and saved  a decent amount of money despite his limited income. He named me his primary beneficiary for a number of his accounts, but one of them has no one listed. Even the simple people in life, when they do not designate a beneficiary, leave behind a lot of paperwork and annoying phone calls for their loved ones to make to handle finances left behind.

After over two and a half months, I’m finally nearing the end of all the paperwork and phone calls, but every time I read those stupid lines at the beginning of each form, “Please accept our sincere sympathy for your loss,” I get so enraged and upset that I don’t want to look at the papers anymore, put it down, and then don’t look at them for another few weeks. That’s probably why this has dragged out so long. But this week, I’m finally getting it all over with. Once this is done, I never have to read that awful line again. I won’t have to think about how hard my brother worked for the little money he made, and all the taxes he had to pay to a country that is so broken that it couldn’t provide him adequate healthcare to address his needs.