October was a nightmare. I went to seven funerals. Three people I know well were diagnosed with cancer. A good friend was robbed at gunpoint, and just for shits and giggles, they beat the hell out of him too. I spent that night with him in the emergency room. It was exactly one week after he had buried his Mother. The odds on the punks being caught? Pretty much zero.
Two weeks ago my sister became a statistic. Identity theft. She checks her bank balance online and finds that she has a 4,000 dollar overdraft. The theives made up checks and a photo id with her name (spelled wrong) and purchased who knows what at very high-end stores. The amount of trouble they went through is astonishing and they'll never get caught. The police, while sympathetic, flat-out told her there is nothing that can be done. They took all the information, said they'd follow up, but the criminals will probably never be caught. Her bank initially refused to credit back her funds. She spent a week trying to get her money back and finally an attorney friend of hers made some (legally) threatening phone calls to the bank president and they've promised to restore her funds, and credit the nearly 600 dollars in overdraft fees, within the next thirty days. So, in effect, she was robbed twice. The bank manager told her that the last legitimate check to hit her account was the one she wrote to her mechanic for car repairs. The bank manager said that the mechanics were probably responsible for the account numbers and routing numbers and address information being stolen. "They do this all the time" she said, meaning auto mechanics in general, not this particular mechanic.
And the mechanic in question? A life-long friend of our brothers, my sister and I. I went to high school with his younger brother, a partner in this mechanic's business. My sister lost it with the bank manager and informed her she knew that wasn't the problem and I guess the argument got pretty heated. Idiot woman, that bank manager. Thankfully my sister didn't tell him, or his brother, what this fool woman said. He died last night. Bone cancer. There is a wake tonight, and again tomorrow, and the funeral is on Saturday. He leaves behind his parents, wife, three teen-aged kids, two brothers, two sisters, 15 nieces and nephews, an enormous number of friends and a hole in the universe where he used to be.
It looks like November is going to suck too.