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epitome of incomprehensibility
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Last week, when August still ruled the Monday-Friday spread, when it wasn't bumping its rump into September, I came home to news.
"Ruth called," Mom told me from the couch. That was her friend. "Victor died earlier this week." The friend's father.
He was the only person I knew who almost died of COVID, early on in the pandemic. He was on a ventilator for about three weeks; most people didn't think he'd survive. Some of the medical staff wanted to take him off it earlier, but apparently Ruth, fairly or unfairly, had used some of her small bit of clout as an admissions worker for a med school to convince them to give him another week.
He survived and returned home. That was about three years ago. Now he had died due to multiple health problems at once, most immediately with his lungs.
I can't say I knew him well, but when his son-in-law said, at the funeral gathering later, "I'll always remember him saying, 'Listen, I have a story for you,'" I remember him saying that. Not necessarily those exact words, but close. He had a soothing voice, a face that would move easily into smiles.
...
Ruth has three children, one younger and two older than me. One of the older children does some accounting-related work and for a couple of years he's filed the family taxes, inexpensively.
Well. A couple of days after I heard of his grandfather's death - Thursday before last - I opened the mail to find a letter from Canada Revenue Agency: I owed something like $3,300 dollars from my 2021 taxes because I'd applied for the low-income benefit when I'd been a full-time student that fall.
I tried not to be angry at him. Mistakes happen. In a way I was slightly glad: see, in one of boss B.'s lectures to me, he'd used accountants as an example of people who were especially careful.
Or maybe I was redirecting my potential anger at Ruth's son towards B.
Perhaps a bit of both.
I'll give the CRA credit, though - they answered the phone surprisingly quickly. I was expecting to be put on hold for half an hour.
What I could reasonably do (and I did) was to contest the interest charge, about $300, since I hadn't known I had anything owing. The worker told me where to find the website form for this; he said it had a decent although not guarantee-able chance of working. I just wouldn't know for months.
So I paid back the rest of the amount owed, feeling more frustrated and helpless than poor. Feeling_poor was before.
The frustration was because I had other things to do on my Aug. 24-28 saycation.
...
Friday, the next day, was the funeral. I decided it wasn't politic to say, "Hi, I know your grandfather just died, but look! You made a mistake with my taxes!"
Do I need to tell him anyway? Ever? Maybe not. Maybe it's like the landlords' cat that I rescued back in 2012; I don't think they'd LIKE to know that they accidentally trapped their cat in their indoor porch right before leaving for a two-week vacation! (I found him after almost a day. He was all right, just hungry and thirsty.)
Besides, in this case it was my fault too. Miscommunication. He probably thought I was taking one or two classes like I'd done the year before, rather than starting a whole degree.
So no. I won't tell him. Maybe my parents can sometime, if they want to.
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