A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
Preparing will an act of self-discovery
We are all going to die. That’s not an apocalyptic statement, but a practical one. Death is guaranteed, so why do so many of us neglect the paperwork? Avoiding wills and mandates, trustees and liquidators is partly inertia, but mostly discomfort: preparing a will is a tallying of what our life amounts to.
When my husband and I got married in 1990, we had decent, fulltime jobs and were debt-free with modest savings. That must sound like a fairy tale to today’s young job-hunters. We did our first will only when we had three children, a mortgage and some hand-medown furniture. That is, we had nothing of monetary value; the only thing that mattered was naming a guardian for the boys.
We still don’t have a lot of valuables, but we own the house now, and have some money earmarked for retirement. The boys don’t need a guardian anymore, but our financial adviser was quite stern: we need a proper, updated will. Mostly, though, at 57, we have seen mortality and it is us. OK, a trip to the notary it is. However, preparing a will is not just getting your documents in order — it is an exercise in self-discovery: what is the value of my life, and what, really, has meaning?
We have no antique collection, no heirlooms. As for money: whatever we don’t manage to spend in our old age will be shared equally among the boys. But what about our “stuff?” Who will get the set of dishes that my father and his sister gave to my grandmother in the 1940s? I have never checked, but as far as I know, they are not valuable, not collectible as it were; still, they cannot be replaced. When I received them and balked at the responsibility — what happens if I break something? — my father said, if it breaks, remember, it’s just a dish.
Who will want the milk pitcher that my grandmother received for her 16th birthday (1899), which my mother gave me with a little note tucked in it: “I thought you should have it since you are her godchild.”
“You have three boys,” the notary said, sadly but firmly. “They are not going to want dishes.”
Suddenly, my Zane Grey-loving, Arizona Highway-subscribing, New Brunswick school teaching grandmother, who, when I last saw her, sun spilling in on her hospice bed, recited me a poem, is gone.
Then there is the ceramic black panther with the green eyes that my other grandmother gave my parents as a housewarming gift after they married in 1949. It was the only thing I asked for when my mother was clearing my parents’ house a few years ago. My sister asked for my father’s paint-splattered hammer and my brothers had comparable desires; I guess the tendency for nostalgia runs in the family. Its sleek stalking pose was the start of many a daydreaming adventure when I was a girl. So much for that grandmother, who raised 14 children, all of whom got their own gift at Christmas (except for the one time, my aunt says, when her mother lost count and her doll ended up in her brother’s stocking) and who expected no less than proper grammar from all of them.
These are things of sentimental value, but they are of value only to me. No point in moping about it; my boys will have their own treasures — perhaps the everyday Pyrex dish that their father always calls the “robin’s egg blue bowl.” Maybe my red fake-leather-bound copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales that my husband has read aloud every Christmas Eve since our first son was born.
I am coming to understand that inheritance should not be a burden; I see we cannot create meaning. Instead, we should enjoy the things that matter to us while we have them. And in the end, when I observe my boys, their ease in the natural world, pleasure in a story well told and everyday gratitude, I appreciate they already have inherited so much from their ancestors. They can always buy their own dishes.
I am coming to understand that inheritance should not be a burden; I see we cannot create meaning. Instead, we should enjoy the things that matter to us while we have them.