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HER FINAL LETTER TO ME

When I came back to take care of mother following her heart attack in 2000, I was told there were instructions for me in the small cabinet in the kitchen and that I was to follow them.  The letter specifically stated that mother's Lladro figurines were my property and not part of her estate and instructed me to remove certain of mother's belongings from her house, which items we had discussed when my daughter and I visited her the year before in November.  We, in fact, memorialized that discussion with a video tape, which clearly indicated which things we were to remove and keep and which we were to give Carol.  Carol was to receive mother's electric organ and her couch.  We were instructed to remove the china, four pieces of antique furniture and the family heirlooms.  This video tape matched exactly what mother had been telling me before, both orally and in her letters.  Mother was quite clear that she did not wish to return to her home, but want to move into an assisted living residence.  She reiterated that information to her doctor and the nurses in Sioux City and again to the doctors at the hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, where she ultimately went in for open heart surgery. Relying on her specific instructions, we sought out an assisted living facility and finding none, conferred with her financial advisor, who advised us of a brand new home being built in the neighboring town of Alta, which we then visited and agreed suited her needs. When she sold the house to the minister and instructed me to go forward with the sale and to remove these items as whatever was left would be sold at auction to provide funding for an elevator for the church elderly, we began packing the items as instructed, with her personally advising us on how best to pack them.

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