3 a.m. Paper Chase

Some people fear outliving their money; others fear not outliving their money. Either approach to life will have some consequences for your loved ones.

Case in point: Mommahosaa's hip surgeries earlier this year (three surgeries from one fall and two dislocations of the new joint) landed her in a rehab facility; with the post-op complications, she lost a lot of strength and will now "graduate" to the long-term wing of the facility.

Medicare and her federal-retiree insurance covered most of this stay, but this week that ended. We were then presented with a bill that could not be paid. She simply had not saved enough. Now we are collecting all the necessary paperwork to apply to Medicaid.

By "we," I mean "me." My brother and I cleaned out Mom's apartment, and the important papers got conveyed to a little pile by my kitchen window. The three "important papers" boxes seemed to have what we needed, but they were not exactly organized--old letters were mixed with new photos, old address books mixed with recent Comcast bills. Almost everything but what I needed: Social Security card and birth certificate.

It seemed to me that I had seen the SS card at one time, perhaps just long enough to put it in "a safe place" - i.e., a black hole.

After searching for that one bit of paper till 3 a.m., I finally did find my "safe place," and the black hole coughed up the SS card, birth certificate, an expired passport, and one or two other goodies.

The moral of the story is, if you're going to outlive your money, get your important paperwork organized enough so that your loved ones don't create black holes trying to do it for you.

And by "you" I mean "me." I see several future black holes in my own important messes. No one needing to deal with my paper has a chance of finding the long-term-care policy I took out on myself (to avoid outliving my money).

Oh, but here's one of the other goodies I found in the black hole: my very first newspaper clipping, from my old pageant days.* Herewith, the Montgomery County Sentinel's coverage of the Little Miss Christmas pageant, November 30, 1961:

Love, hosaa
front and center

* My one and only pageant. The young lady front left won the competition. I believe I came in dead last, after chastising the announcer for mispronouncing my name. At age five, I showed strong tendencies toward correcting other people and questioning authority. Heh!