My mother had a crisis the other week. We recently completed the winding-up of my father’s estate following his death. The final task outstanding was for my mother to close down the executors’ bank account and transfer the final balance to whichever of her accounts or investments she wanted to.
I got an anguished phone call on the Saturday morning. There were a few gulps, a large intake of breath and then a strangled, “Jane, I’ve lost your father’s savings!” followed by floods of tears. It turned out that my mother had written a cheque from the executors’ account and had sent that cheque in the post to her online bank. The executors’ account had already been debited but the online bank was claiming it had no trace of having received the cheque, let alone having presented it for cashing.
I attempted to calm her down by assuring her that it was most likely to be a delay in clearing the funds or a computer input error with the online bank rather then international fraud as she was sure was a certainty. I reminded her that the executors’ account was in a bank that is closed all weekend and I was sure she could sort it out on the Monday. I think she slept a bit better than she might otherwise have done.
On the Monday she rang both banks in an attempt to locate the missing money. She rang me at home that evening, again in floods of tears. Each bank was blaming the other; neither seemed concerned. I told her to try again the next day, to insist on speaking to the bank manager and not an underling, to tell them she was an old-age pensioner, a widow, that this money was her late husband’s life savings and most of all that her daughter was a lawyer and would be taking this up with them and the relevant authorities if the money was not located pronto.
On the Tuesday she phoned me at work from her mobile phone. My mother’s mobile phone is about 10 years old and resembles a house brick in both size and weight. She faithfully carries it round with her everywhere but never has it switched on and never uses it because it costs money to do so. Consequently she has forgotten how to use it. She’d phoned the manager of the bank that had cashed the missing cheque as instructed early that morning but he wasn’t there and she’d since set off on a hike in the Lake District with the rambling club. She’d left her mobile phone number with the bank manager’s PA and was now panicking as to how to end a call should he ring. Frightening, I know.
Anyway, eventually the bank manager called her on her mountain, while she was eating her packed lunch, and explained that he was very sorry she was so upset and he quite understood why and he had initiated the process to locate where the money had gone, but it would take some time and he hoped she would understand but to try not to worry. My mother was slightly mollified but, at the same time, extremely worried and cross with her other bank, the online one, which could still find no trace of having received the cheque. My mother took me through the whole posting process for the third time.
On the Wednesday my mother phoned again. She’d been due to have a meeting with her financial advisor that afternoon at which meeting she was going to invest the missing money. Since the money was still unaccounted for she’d phoned the advisor up to reschedule and explained what had happened. The advisor apparently sounded perplexed at the end of the long and involved tale. “But Mrs C,” she said, “you gave me a cheque for the very same amount of money last time I saw you two weeks ago. It’s sitting in your account right here waiting for this meeting and your investment decision.”
Yes. My mother, the woman who gave birth to me and has, worryingly, passed her genes on not only to me but through me to my three practically perfect offspring, had a brain fart of massive proportions. She had spent five days in hysterics at the thought that someone had embezzled her money; she had spent five days berating bank managers both real and virtual, only to find that she hadn’t posted the damn cheque to the online bank at all but had handed it to her financial advisor for lodging in yet another bank account, where it had been safely sitting earning interest quietly for two weeks.
The words Mad Old Bat come to mind. Affectionately, of course.
