220210 Sentinel, ALERT!

I have had the same credit card for 40 years now.
This morning I got the first alert in 40 years.

Some entity is looking into my credit worthiness or worse yet they got ahold of my account. Have they penetrated my account? Are there charges racking up by the dozens? I was in a sudden panic. What is going on here? If that has never happened before, something has gone horribly wrong!

I checked and found the name of the outfit that showed up on the alert and then logged into my credit account, hoping no one had pirated the account and changed the password. My heart was pounding, blood pressure sailing into unknown territory, fingers trembling. This was something I did not need today or ever need at any time in my life. Not good, not good, not good.

My account looked okay. There were no charges I did not recognize, but what was happening? I went back to the alert and looked at the date of the activity and name of the outfit that was inquiring and then a dim light started to flicker inside my brain. I had seen that name recently. It is the system name that sends out information to residents about rent due and maintenance requests etc. The date was yesterday and then the dark sky opened up and I could see clearly now.

I was signing up for a new one year lease yesterday and I had told the on-site manager that Joyce should no longer be on the lease and she had passed away. That opened the can of worms. I had to walk over to the office and show proof that I still had enough income to pay the rent. It seems that the apparent loss of income was a big issue for them, especially with the increase in rent this year. That automatically triggered the credit check. And that triggered my ensuing momentary panic. Now, as I put a wrap on this post, it occurs to me that had the reverse been true with me passing away, Joyce would have had trouble staying here with the increasing rent, not being able to drive and needing to take a cab everywhere and losing the major part of our combined income. Also her big problem would have been her limited vision. She could not even be out walking to a cab, into a store or carry in groceries. She would have become homebound, living inside a 750 square foot box.
Sometimes the Lord in heaven works in mysterious ways and this counts as one of them as far as I am concerned. I had, I thought, everything set up for her. I thought I would pass first, but did not have a clue about how she would cope with her limited strength and her little vision that she had left.