I gathered up various papers and caught a bus to the Philadelphia Municipal Services Building yesterday. It turns out that when I stop reading the news or looking at social media, I am no longer too afraid to tackle the difficult things. So I started tackling the difficult things. You know: Cleaning the first floor. Getting routine diagnostic tests. Making doctor’s appointments.

Untangling my late husband’s city taxes.

The taxes were today.

My late husband, you see, was self-employed. He called himself a computer consultant, but really he was a professional hand-holder and all-around buddy.

He always insisted on doing the taxes, even when he was terribly ill, because it was too annoying trying to tell me how to do it. He wasn’t wrong; self-employment is its own special hell, tax-wise, so though I was the one who paid all the bills, after my husband died, I hired a fancy accountant to take care of all the 2022 returns.

This year, though, I started getting notices that my dead husband hadn’t filed his 2023 or 2024 BIRT or NPT taxes. (I won’t bother to explain the acronyms.) It makes sense he hadn’t filed them, since by 2023 (and 2024) he was a box of ashes in a hole in the ground.

I corresponded for a month with some unnamed person at the Department of Revenue, and finally (after repeatedly sending them a PDF of the death certificate), I was able to get his account closed, I thought.

Then this week I got a notice from the department that he owed self-employment taxes for 2024.

Oh, yeah, and I started getting notices that I hadn’t filed my 2024 returns, either. That was because, as part of getting refunds the year my husband died, I ended up making a city business tax account for myself. This was not a good idea. The less you get involved with the City of Philadelphia’s Revenue Department, the better. Let me be clear: I was not involved with my husband’s business, ever.

Hence the bus trip yesterday.

I walked in the main lobby, where a frantic guard was having people sign in manually because the Verizon network went down in the area the day before, and their electronic systems still weren’t working. The guard sent me downstairs to the tax office and the check-in podiums, where a nice lady standing there typed in all my information for me because these check-in podiums universally suck. She gave me a slip with my number, which was eventually called.

Someone had to tell me where to go for Window 63, which was not a window and had no sign; it was a gate, guarded by a bored security guard. The gate led to a door, where an impatient young man beckoned me into a dim room full of cubicles.

I showed him the letters I had received and the death certificate. He did not smile. He checked my husband’s account, and confirmed that it was closed. The letter must have been sent out automatically before I succeeded in closing it.

Then I asked about the account in my name.

“Were you involved in your husband’s business?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do you have an accountant?”

“I did, but I don’t now,” I said, staring at him doubtfully, feeling rather like an elderly and befuddled widow, which I was at the moment.

Suddenly, he became slightly more human. “Okay, here’s what you do,” he said, now smiling faintly, and he wrote a series of steps on the paper with my name on it.

So now that I am home, I have logged into my account at the Department of Revenue. I filed a BIRT return for $0 for 2024 and one for 2025, and then I filed a NPT return for $0 for 2024 and 2025. And Monday, once the changes have processed, assuming Verizon doesn’t go down again, I will log into the account one last time, click “More,” and click “Close account.”

People aren’t allowed to die, you know. The system won’t allow it.

For nearly ten years after my mother died, I still got catalogues and membership renewal forms for her in the mail, even though she had never lived in my house, and even though I had never put my address on any of her memberships. At some point, the deluge stopped, and that was when I knew for sure my mother was gone.

I still get a lot of mail for my husband, too. I guess at some point my husband will be officially gone, too, except that all the utilities are still in his name, so he probably won’t disappear until I do. Assuming the City of Philadelphia allows it.