Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Wills


Today, we walked over to the lawyer's office to finish our wills, to get it all notarized and legal. 

It was a beautiful spring day. Brilliant blue sky, lots of sun. Snowdrops and crocuses everywhere. The newly arrived robins hopping around the big green lawns of the very old houses along the old brick street. Our world is awake and fresh from her winter rest. 

We signed and initialed and received our instructions. Things were notarized and given to us to be placed in a safe place that our executer knows about, in case something happens to the two of us simultaneously. Everything folded neatly and tucked into two pockets labeled "Will" in very serious font. 

It disposes of our worldly goods and divides things up between five 'children' who are now all adults in their 30s.

As we walk back home surrounded by spring busting out all over, I find myself thinking that about what we leave behind. I hope that it is more than divided up property and things. I hope there are happy memories, and 'remember that time...' and laughter. I hope there are things of ours that they want to have because it triggers some sentimental thought. 

In  the end, I hope that there are people who find time in the spring to return to sit by the lilac bush that is to be plopped in the hole my ashes have been dumped into.  But even if they don't, perhaps in the spring, when the lilacs bloom they will catch a random whiff of the rich scent from some random lilac, and they will remember how their mother loved lilacs. I hope that they remember that she loved them too.



12 comments:

  1. We have notaries here but I don't have a clue what they do and they aren't to do with wills.
    I hope you spelt my name correctly.
    Just like my mother, you are going to live to be too old for your wealth to be of much use to your children.
    The rest of your post left me a little wet eyed. I think we all hope to be remembered well. Nice.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lovely thoughts Debby but I am sure you will be here for many years yet.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We made our wills a few years ago. They are not easy decisions to make. Nice thoughts Debby.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You are so right - we can apportion our possessions, but there's no division of love. And it's that which lives on the longest - in the values our children inherit, in the tiny (yet essential) differences we make to the world and its future. This is the rich scent that lingers the longest.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love your perspective. Wife's and my parents left us some cash and some items by which we remember them, but it's those intangibles, of which you write so beautifully, that mean a great deal more. And for good or bad, I see my father every time I look in the mirror. (And sometimes I hear him when I speak . . . not always a good thing).

    ReplyDelete
  6. I guess we all wonder how we will be remembered, especially those of us without children. Will we be remembered at all?

    Dave and I need to get our wills sorted out one of these days. We've been saying that for years!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Steve said it for me too. As we have no children I am not sure that there will be anyone around to remember us. My niece and nephews all have their own lives and families and will probably not think much about old auntie J after I have "popped my clogs".

    ReplyDelete
  8. How poignant, and I am sure they will associate the lilacs with you. We still have forget-me-not descendants from my dad from about 4 decades ago. At least, I trust that some will return this year.

    ReplyDelete
  9. As a young man, I was always in awe of all the things my grandparents had that I would someday inherit. I felt like a rich man then even though I knew inheritance was a long ways away. After sorting through my grandfathers estate and getting my grandmother moved to an assisted living facility decades later, I realized that those physical items never meant much to them and thus didn't mean much to me. What meant the most were the things they treasured.

    If you have trouble with asparagus, lilacs are my Achilles heel. As a young boy, we had a huge lilac bush off our kitchen stoop and I fondly remember the spring time fragrances they always brought to our house when the windows were open or a freshly picked bouquet was on the table. Probably five years ago, I ordered a bunch of trees to replant in our yard and as a "free" gift, I selected five old fashioned lilac bushes. They came in as a stick about a foot tall and I have all five planted out along our driveway. One is still about a foot tall and the other four are between two and three feet tall, five years later and only last year began to multiply. I'm beginning to think by the time I see them like the giant shrub of my youth, I may be an old man. Perhaps if I have my kids dump my ashes on them they would grow faster.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The notaries here are for things like recording title changes for a car, for witnessing things, etc. We get quite a bit of use out of our notary. But notaries are not the only place to get things notarized. In this case, we signed our wills, and the lawyer and a staff person 'notarized' them, in this case, witnessed them. If the will was ever to be contested, there are two witnesses who can say 'we were there. The will is as they wanted it.'

    Not that anyone should be bickering. It's equally divided. I have never understood people who do it any other way.

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a lovely way of speaking of your wills - I hope they read it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Interesting how many people leave a legacy of plants. My parents both did, and today I heard about my 19 year old granddaughter swapping stories with a coworker about fall blooming and spring blooming crocus. Her grandfather has left hundreds of the former blooming all over the world.

    ReplyDelete

I'm glad you're here!

Weary

I am sure that everyone has seen the video of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I lived in Baltimore for a couple years while my...