When our home flooded, we lost all mail received to that point that had been either set aside or recently arrived. Unfortunately, this also included many tax-related documents required for completing the most recent taxes due. Equally as unfortunate, when you are facing a crisis it becomes hard to concentrate on all the things you normally would plus the crisis at hand. As such, reacquiring the tax documents that were damaged fell to the back burner somewhat.
My uncle has a tax preparer who has done my mother's taxes since my grandparents both died and resulted in a change in how her taxes needed to be prepared. Ever since, traditionally documents would go to my uncle who would then give them to his preparer. We didn't know that at the time he was falling behind on his taxes as well as ours and the tax preparer wasn't getting in touch with us. We had no idea what was happening until about 2020. I did what I could to get all documents to my uncle and request documents to be resent to us, which was no easy task. Because my uncle was also dealing with personal matters including moving to a new place, it was implied that I should deal with my uncle's tax preparer directly. Again, this turned out to be a little challenging; not only do I not have the rapport with him that my uncle does, but I feel like I am getting less than professional service as a stranger (perhaps he formed opinions of me and my mother arbitrarily?). He takes a bout a week to reply to me each time even though this is not the busy season for him, he gives me generic letters that don't make any sense when all I need to know is if there's anything left to submit to him, which it turned out there was one thing I gave my uncle to give to him in December that never was turned over. Fortunately, the 2019 taxes were finally completed this month, but because of the expenses of the house repairs, it was deemed that she would owe a LOT of money on her taxes which hardly seemed fair at all, especially because it was they first year where laws had changed that disasters like ours couldn't be written off unless it was a federally declared regional issue. We ended up owing over 50k- far more than we ever owed before and we didn't have the spare money so we had to dip into mom's newly replenished retirement again. We still have to process the next year and I am afraid of what that might be because we continued to spend on house repairs...
While we have been using hotels, my uncle has retired as a professor and moved to Texas to be with his daughter. she encouraged him and he accepted. he gave up a nice neighborhood, a great house, many possessions, and local friends to move many states away to a prefab cabin that's about a quarter the size of what he had and his daughter takes advantage of him regularly. He lets it happen so he can only blame himself, really. My mother and I have encourage him to stand up for himself and suggest various ways to deal with matters them might be less aggressive yet get his point across, but he doesn't want to make waves. Now, his daughter has decided to move and he has to move, too, because his prefab cabin is on her property. Thus ensues a whole new slew of troubles for him. He wants to talk about his issues, naturally, but when we react to the outrageous troubles he has, he gets uncomfortable. You could sat that his daughter's actions have a trickle down effect. We have known about this for years but it only seems to get worse and now that she's an adult it's less excusable and less correctable. We don't have good relations with her and I'm all too happy to not have to deal with her and I imagine when my uncle dies I won't have to deal with her again.
My great uncle passed away in late 2019. We we informed after the fact even though were are only one state away and would have wanted to be there for him during his final hours. We weren't informed of his funeral services or where his remains would be laid to rest. There's been no closure. No future graveside visits won't be possible, either. To top things off, a woman we never knew contacted only my uncle about this, not my mother who is the older sibling. She did not leave a lot of details such as her name or contact information. She simply told my uncle that my great uncle had lived with her for the past 40 or so years and that she had been with him when he died, which I think she failed to mention cause of death. He had multiple ailments so it would have been nice to know what it was. This was a particularly curious thing to learn about this woman because my great uncle had never mentioned that he was living with her or even had a relationship- especially so because he was separated but not divorced...
Another thing that occurred since we have been living in hotels is the passing of Pogo. I don't recall at the moment if I ever blogged bout him before, but Pogo was our dog, but he was so much more than just a dog. He joined our family when he was just a hair over two weeks old. He was weened from his mother too early hand had early separation anxiety. he was originally just a pet and family member, but through the bonds forged he ended up becoming my mother's service dog, too. He sensed when she was having sleep apnea attacks, when she was having having partial complex seizures, and she sensed things about me too like when I was having HS attacks which included painful cysts. We always stayed with him and he always stayed with us; we saved each other reciprocally and regularly. We had him with us for over 17 wonderful years, but ten minute before Valentine's Day 2020 we had to take him to and emergency vet where he was put to sleep in my mother's arms. He had acute renal failure that couldn't be treated and he couldn't be saved; his body functions were already shutting down and he wasn't responding to any treatments. I was the most heart breaking think I have ever gone through, including losing family members, relationships, and filing for bankruptcy. Even now it's still heartbreaking; my mother and I miss him terribly and we still cry, but we think we want another dog when we move into our new home. We hope to have another opportunity to have such a mutually wonderful relationship.
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