A Last Visit

It has been a bittersweet several months.  My Bride’s mother passed away last year, and my Bride had picked a most opportune time to retire, as she immediately spent her new free time with her mother, as she decided that she wanted the service of hospice and to join her late husband and all her sisters and brothers.  She made my Bride promise to handle her estate and keep the family together; I asked my Bride what terrible thing did she do to her mother, for her to get such an onerous job bequeathed upon her.  I was not aware until this all happened that the house must be sold in a year, or the estate is hit with Capital Gains, just another way to tax the dead.

The house was totally emptied of sixty-some-odd years of memories, furniture, papers, photos, and other possessions.  Getting the house fixed up, painted, and cleaned which all five daughters lamented that it should have been accomplished while she was alive to enjoy it.  Of course, everyone’s house and even some of the grandchildren are now surrounded by keepsakes and curios, and even furniture.  Almost all the participants have cleaned, scrubbed, stripped carpeting and paddings, caulked, did minor repairs, lugged materials to recycling centers, and filled dumpsters.  Then there were professionals that came in for painting, and new flooring.  This all culminated in having everyone visit the now empty house that has a realtor lockbox on the front door.  I do believe that all did get to the house, even the notoriously always late individuals.  I was sent out early to go get a restaurant to secure seating for about twenty people for dinner and drinks.  The amazing thing is that a couple of restaurants that we contacted would not try to accommodate us, I wonder what business college those managers attended.

It was rather unusual sitting at a restaurant table for ten, as they were working to get a table right behind me and one alongside of me to make sure that we would be able to make it work.  It was a nice family style restaurant with a bar only a couple of blocks away from the home, and my Bride had eaten there with one of her cousins.  We stopped earlier to get a feel from the employees and were given a go-ahead, and they did make some great Decaffeinated Spanish Coffees.  The crowd started coming in and everyone could order whatever they wanted off the menu.  Since, my Bride announced from the beginning that she would not take any payment for being executor, and if you ever become an executor, please do not be shy about getting a fee, she thought that this dinner should be paid for by the estate.  The food was good, the wine selection was easy for the bar, as all the wines were from Cupcake Vineyards, which was established in 2008 by The Wine Group.  The concept of Cupcake Vineyards is to offer value-priced wines from different regions like Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, Chardonnay from the Central Coast, Malbec from Mendoza, Riesling from the Mosel Valley, etc., etc., etc.  The wines are bulk produced, but a step up from jug-wines of yore. We started with the Cupcake Vineyards Pinot Grigio Delle Venezie DOC 2021.  This wine had notes of citrus fruits and melons.  On the palate a crisp wine of apple and pineapple that had a finish of honey and lemon zest; it was a bit too sweet for both of us.  The other wine was Cupcake Vineyards Chardonnay Monterey County 2020.  This wine offered notes of apples, melons, and almonds.  On the palate tones of apple and pears nice acidity and a short finish of fruit.  It may be the last time for all the sisters to get together, until maybe when the house is sold.      

About thewineraconteur

A non-technical wine writer, who enjoys the moment with the wine, as much as the wine. Twitter.com/WineRaconteur Instagram/thewineraconteur Facebook/ The Wine Raconteur
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2 Responses to A Last Visit

  1. My condolences to you and your wife. My mom and I are working right now to get her house on the market so she can move into something smaller. It’s nice that your other family members helped! I wish I had that!

    • Thank you for the kind words. Enjoy your time with your mother, and she can at least identify items that may be overlooked, especially in the paper work. Good luck with the endeavors.\
      – John

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