Accepting 7: 47: Trying to Say Goodbye While Executing the Estate

It was the call no one wants to receive. When Brant Thompson’s phone rang early that morning, he thought he knew what to expect, but knowing didn’t make it any easier. His mother, with whom he had always had a close relationship, had passed away. Putting down his phone, the time 7:47 a.m. flashes and, while not the time of her death, it would serve as the marker of this memory. Both his father and his only sibling, his sister, Margo, had died some years before, and with no other relatives-both his parents had been only children-he was the last of the loving, close-knit Thompson family still standing. While putting the rest of his life on hold, he had been making the three-hour journey to stay in the family home during his mother’s illness and hospitalization and navigating the many difficult decisions about her end-of-life care.

Now, deep in the throes of grief, as the executor of her estate, it was his job-and his alone-to take care of the myriad things a loved one’s death entails. Contact his mother’s friends and colleagues. Arrange the funeral. Deal with the bank. The insurance company. The lawyers. And the most painful and complicated task of all: empty out and say goodbye to the three-storey house his parents had built and lived in for some fifty years.

With wit, insight, and compassion, Thompson explores the nature of his grief and documents some of the challenges and pitfalls he experienced as a first-time executor, which he hopes will be helpful to others in similar situations. Accepting 7:47: Trying to Say Goodbye While Executing the Estate was written to honour his mother’s legacy of helping others.