My father died three years ago, and yet we still receive mail for him. The most annoying offender was a hearing aid company which repeatedly sent mailings, despite me calling them and telling them he was deceased. After the fourth time around the mulberry bush with this company apologizing for their error, yet another mailing came. "Are you hard of hearing?" it said. I called and told them that Dad was, indeed, hard of hearing, and there was NOTHING they could do to help him at this point. A fifth apology and promise to remove him from "the list." Yeah, right.
Within three weeks, guess what, another mailing. "Are you hard of hearing?" it asked. Kiki took a pen and wrote, "No, are you? We have told you five times he is dead." She put the mailing into the postage-paid return envelope and sent it back to the company.
The mailings stopped.
Mom died this summer. A month after her death, a mailing came which read, "Here's the second chance you've been waiting for!" Remarkable. And here I thought that resurrection was pretty close to the time of death and was done by God, not Mutual of Omaha. I sent the mailing back with a note telling them Mom was dead. Last week, another second chance came. I was irritated and sent the mailing back with a forwarding address for mom: Eastlawn Memory Gardens.
So, last week, when the phone rang on Sunday afternoon, and the person on the other end said, "Mrs. P?", the kids alerted. I replied, "She died last summer."
"Oh," he said, thinking fast on his feet, "the name I really have here is Mr. P."
"He died three years ago." The kids went off into gales of laughter in the background. Flustered, the caller hung up.
And I was just about to give him the phone number for the cemetery.
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