$10.96

Today my PC alarm clock failed to go off, and I missed my dental cleaning appointment. After rescheduling for tomorrow, I decided to be hard on myself and pick the worst task on the list for my day's project as a punishment.

So I went to Wells Fargo to cancel my Mom.

Honestly, I expected some kind of bad news. Overdrafts. Penalties. Fines, fees, lectures. Something to chastise me for not doing it sooner, for letting this bit of business drag out so long. I've been putting it off for a year and a half. I worried about what would happen when I went in and found out how much I owed the bank as the only survivor of our shared account. For all I know I was liable for her debts or something now that she's gone.

I have been worrying for all this time that somewhere, somehow, giant debts were piling up. But I didn't want to go and straighten it out, because I thought the news would be bad, and I was a coward.

But I never suspected $10.96.

At the bank, the teller told me Mom's accounts were already closed, except for one checking account that was listed as inactive. I didn't owe them anything for taking so long, and in fact, they seemed to take a customer waiting for ages to close a dead family member's account as a matter of course.

I had come in planning to tell them my Mom had died. As an excuse, almost, when I knew damn well I should have done it all sooner. The teller said she was sorry for my loss.

And then I went into an office, and a very nice banker re-opened the account for purposes of shutting it down. It took maybe two minutes to run through the paperwork, and then she handed me a piece of paper detailing and endorsing a check for the balance of the account, which I signed.

$10.96, all that was left in her account. The last money she ever owned. The last money she ever cried over. My mother died in poverty, so much poverty that a bigoted funeral director held her ashes hostage and she missed her own charity funeral.

Such a tiny, pathetic amount of money. $10.96 she'll never get to break on another stupid pack of that gum she liked so much, kicking off a huge fight with my sister over finances. Jesus wept.

Cleaning out her stuff after she died, I found a Tarot card torn to pieces in a keepsake box. When I looked it up on Google, a website said that particular card held strong connotations of financial and emotional ruin, ill health and shitty luck. Ripping it up must have been like writing her autobiography. All that suffering until you just can't take it anymore. First she killed the card, then she killed herself.

The banker came back with an envelope that was sealed shut, handed it to me, and told me it was done. I was trying to hold it together. She was very nice and I thanked her for her help, but I barely made it out of the lobby alive.

I'm still crying. I think part of me is going to keep on crying forever.

Her world was so small and empty and helpless, and now it's gone, traded in for $10.96 and a pile of dust.

I want a refund.