Mom went back to college in 1994, and received a BA from the University of Central Florida in 1998 at the age of fifty. She was justifiably quite proud of this accomplishment, and my sister and I were very proud of her, too.
She owed just under $9,000 in student loans when she died. I had been dreading calling Nelnet, Inc. because I remembered what a pain it always was to deal with them when they still owned my student loans. But I called this morning and it was surprisingly simple. The man who answered the phone told me that his father had recently died, so he knew how hard it was to deal with all this.
He asked me to confirm her birthday, social security number and — interestingly — the city where she died. He said that was all I needed to do and he would handle the rest. I asked him if he wanted me to fax them a copy of her death certificate, because my little sister told me they were going to want that. He said they didn’t accept faxes, but I could mail it to the claims department in Denver. So I did that and now I feel like one more piece of her is gone.