Ode to a Death Certificate

I almost went postal in the post office yesterday.

You would not believe what I had to go through to get my dad's second batch of death certificates. "What?" you ask. "Second batch?" Let me explain:

When my dad died, I knew he was going to be cremated. Who knows about where to find a cremation place when one's remaining parent dies? Not me. I looked in the phone book. I chose the funeral home that I did because the funeral director's voice was kind.

One of the questions they ask when making funeral or cremation arrangements is, "How many death certificates would you like?" How many? I don't know, how many does one need? I ordered three. Who knows? I don't know from death certificates.

I make the other arrangements, and then I talk to some people. Turns out one should order far more death certificates than I did, because you need one for every account that was held. One to close the checking account, one to close the savings account, one for the phone company, one for the electric company, one for this IRA, one for that IRA, one for the life insurance, one to open an estate account, one to close the Visa account...you get the picture. I call back the funeral director and order seventeen more death certificates, to make a nice even twenty.

Well, apparently if you don't order them all at once it takes longer. The funeral director tells me that it will take eight weeks for the second batch to arrive. Fine. She even calls me to ask where they should be sent. I calculate when I will receive them (August 21st), and request that they be sent to my house. She says she'll send them on to me when she receives them.

August 21st comes and goes and no death certificates. I call the funeral director. She reminds me that she said it would take a long time. I remind her that eight weeks have gone by. She says she has to deal with the city now and find out what's going on. I am very aware that this is not my fault.

I call the city myself, and they tell me that the death certificates had to be altered as a result of the autopsy report (the original three said cause of death unknown, and the new ones would now say cardiovascular disease), and that they had been ready since July 31st. I find out that I can't order death certificates myself; they have to be sent to the original source; in this case, the funeral director. She and I go back and forth on the phone.

On September 27th, thirteen weeks after I request them, the death certificates come in the mail. They arrive via registered mail, so I have to go to the post office to pick them up. I finally have them in my hands. It's emotional.

I get home, open the envelope, and read over the altered certificates. I cannot believe my eyes when I see that they got my dad's date of birth wrong. I start crying. They had it right in the first batch, and now it's not even off by a digit, it's off by a few days. I figure for insurance purposes they're going to want to correct date. They also got his education wrong (an Associate's degree instead of a Bachelor's), but I'm not going to fight that. I'm so exhausted from this process. Who knew it would be so nerve wracking?

I call the funeral director and try to keep it together. I tell her that I can't take this anymore, she has to make a phone call, because I'm losing my mind over this. She immediately makes a call and arranges to have the certificates sent directly to me, which they usually don't do.

Yesterday I got a notice that a registered envelope was waiting for me at the post office. I could pick it up after 5:00; the post office closed at 7:00. I go at 6:00, which is a lot after 5:00, and the guy behind the counter tells me that the envelope is still on the truck and the driver isn't back yet. I breathe. I breathe. I very nearly lose it. I tell the man that it's not really that great to have such specific directions if a package isn't going to be where they say it's going to be. I realize it's out of my hands for the moment, and try to calm down. The guy tells me to come back tomorrow, and I tell him that I don't want the same thing to happen. He assures me it won't. I hold it together.

Today I go to get the envelope, fifteen weeks from when I request it. It's there. I open it at home. It's correct. They send sixteen instead of the seventeen I paid for ($15 for each). I notice that, but at this point, I don't care. I can move on. I will move on. Now I know from death certificates.