Situations like that remind us how short life is and how suddenly we may find ourselves doing what used to be the job of another family member. On one hand it's great that people divide responsibilities like in the home of our OP where mother probably took care of the house and the father dealt with money and investments but on the other hand when one of us gets sick we begin to struggle. I don't know how to fix that because you can't expect both mother and father to be able to take care of everything all alone.