After mom's death, we had to settle her estate. It was characteristically challenging.

June of this year marked the fourth anniversary of my mother's passing. I loved my mother, and I miss her. But I can get somewhat irritated when I think about her. That does not sound nice. But let me explain.

Mom was frequently hard to deal with. To give you a reference for this, I will direct you to the classic television program, "Everybody Loves Raymond." If you are familiar with the program, you will recall Raymond's mother, Marie Barone, played by actress Doris Roberts. If you aren't familiar with the program, you can catch up through the reruns.

To say Marie Barone was overbearing would be an understatement. She was nosy, passive-aggressive, controlling, kept score, had no filter along the path, taking the thoughts from her head to her mouth, and seemed to be able to make any issue about herself. Now, imagine Marie Barone multiplied by 10 and on steroids. That was my mother.

Mom was Marie Barone before the character Marie Barone existed. My sister and I watched "Everybody Loves Raymond" every week without fail. I cannot tell you how often we ended up on the phone during the broadcast, talking about what Marie did in the episode and how our mother had done the same or similar first. We even kidded about filing suit against the network for stealing our mother's material.

One funny thing about Mom's behavior was these traits were only on display around the immediate family. To everyone else, she was the sweetest, most amusing little lady. Everyone at the funeral said so. We all rolled our eyes and smiled as these folks greeted us by the casket at the visitation.

As I said, this does not sound nice. But she was my mom. I can talk about her if I want. You may say, "If I had a mom like that, I would not write about it in the newspaper." Well … to each his own. I chose writing over therapy. This is cheaper. You'll have a clearer perspective of the situation in a moment.

A few weeks before her death, Mom called me to her bedside. She then told me she had hidden four small safes in her house, and we were not to look for them until she passed. She alluded to the safes containing significant assets.

When Mom passed, my sister, the estate's executor, could not find Mom's will or at least "the right will." So, we hoped the correct copy would be in one of the safes. Mom had acted like the safes would be challenging to find, like we would need a map, but they were in closets behind clothes and boxes on the floor.

The real search was for the keys to the safes. Results were slow until one of us opened a kitchen drawer that used to have odds and ends in it. Everything that had been there was gone. But it was full of keys, dozens and dozens of keys. The search got slower. We had to try dozens of keys to find the right ones.

None of us knew what any of these keys went to. Some were for safety deposit boxes. These keys had numbers, but nothing identified which bank owned them. We would be unable to track the boxes down until we could provide banks with copies of the death certificate and the will. Banks won't discuss customer accounts without this proof. So, we returned to the safes.

Even small safes are heavy enough to wonder how my little mother moved them. The answer was provided when we found out one of my sons helped her buy and hide the safes. He was not allowed to see what she put in them in between. Three safes weighed about what I expected, but I could barely drag the fourth across the floor.

Then came the moment of truth. We started opening the safes. I opened the heavy one first. Quarters, the safe was full of quarters. Ultimately, the tally was over $450 in quarters.

The second safe held 1,300 $1 bills. They were in 13 bundles with 100 bills per bundle. That was it.

The third safe had a few old coins, a few foreign coins, and a large stack of U.S. savings bonds. Half the bonds were in my sister's name and half mine. They were recently issued. They mature when my sister and I are 87 and 85 years old. We are currently 62 and 60. We were 56 and 54 at the time.

The fourth safe was the best. It only contained two items. But they were stellar. Two rain check tickets to a 1978 St. Louis Cardinals baseball game.

Mom always recorded important information in a ring binder. Serial numbers for every bond, insurance policy numbers, bank account numbers, etc. That became an issue when we found not one but three binders. All shared some information, but some items in each were not in the others.

She had listed several life insurance policies. We found the actual policy for a couple but not the others. Side note: Did you know there is an organization with ties to all life insurance carriers that can tell you the owner and beneficiaries of any policy written in modern times? It takes about six weeks for them to do the research. With their help, we discovered some of the policies listed in Mom's notebooks were real. She had made up the others.

The correct will was found, but it had been witnessed but never notarized. This meant probate court if we could not find the witnesses and get an affidavit from each verifying their signature.

We discovered both had worked at a bank she used to use. They were found through social media. The first had retired and moved to Maryland. She was happy to help. The second was a different story. She thought the request was a scam. We needed her to verify her signature, but she was not buying it. This went on for some time. I began to feel like all those Nigerian princes I have helped over the years who were trying to regain their family fortunes.

The witness mentioned our repeated contacts to her mother, who worked in a law office. Her mom did a little research and discovered our mother had recently died and that we were probably on the up and up. We eventually received the verification we needed.

Situations like these continued for months. The safety deposit box keys were just old safety deposit box keys; most of the remaining keys did not fit any lock we found, etc. My poor sister suffered through the executorship. In hindsight, I should have given her some of my share of the quarters. Maybe when I’m 85 I’ll cash a bond and give her the money.

A couple of years after she passed, our cousin Larry asked, "Did you guys have trouble settling your mom's estate?" My sister responded, "Why do you ask?" "Because she told me she was really going to mess with you guys," he said. Thanks for the heads up, Larry.

I thought about this recently because of the anniversary of Mom's death and because my sister and I made a date to see a Cardinals game in September with our spouses. That was part of Mom's last wishes. Just before she passed, she made us promise to spend time together and be good to each other.

I should have contacted the Cardinals organization before I bought the tickets to see if they would honor those 1978 rain checks.

Dr. Jeff Miller is a doctor of chiropractic at the Missouri Orthopaedic Institute and the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Mom created many challenges to settling her estate