Don’t Mess with Texas
Remember this?
Yesterday I got the letter saying I wasn’t a blood relative and I wasn’t qualified to have these records.
I am not happy. So, of course, I called ‘em up. I tried being nice, being reasonable, being mad, being loud, being rational, being irrational–nothing worked. They just kept saying someone like the parents or children of these folks were the only ones qualified to order death certificates before 25 years had lapsed. Well, their parents have been dead since the 1970’s, but that had no effect. Two of the four had no children and their spouses are dead. Their living siblings are not exactly able to go through this process–one with dementia is in a veteran’s home, another is in a nursing home, and the third is a young 78 still farming.
I asked how they would know if the person sending in the request was really a sibling. They kept spouting the company line–I began to wonder if it was code for “Lie on your next application and we’ll send them to you.”
So I called my uncle and asked him if he would sign the requests and send them in for me. He said he would–but he also asked when I was going to get my great-aunt Margaret Cooper Crabtree’s memoirs published.
I hate it when that happens. quid pro quo?