I'm not sure how old I was, maybe 10, when Granny went from her own elder apartment to a nursing home. Her health and mentation had deteriorated to the point that she needed more than a daily visit from meals-on-wheels, and adult kids taking her to shop and to the bank. The room in the community home was small, and she had a roommate, but the communal areas were clean, pleasantly furnished, she attended mass daily at the church next door. All in all, not so bad.
But with so much less space, her children had to apportion out many of her modest possessions. I was there, with my mother, on the day. I knew enough to only ask her quietly if I could have some item. She shushed me, and had me watch as her SIL and nieces descended like locusts. "You only really know anyone once you've shared an inheritance with them."
In the end, most of it went to her oldest son to hold, due to an older daughter's force of character. What happened to the stash after is a mystery to me. But my mother's message was clear, they weren't my things, not to want, not to have. I took it as a point of pride I would never pick over the treasured items of anyone else as my right. In the end, I was given a footstool, a silk robe, and a favorite blanket, which I treasured as gifts for many years.
That my mother, the last time I spoke to her, dangled an inheritance up to me, offended this sense of my own integrity. How could she think that would entice me to emotional closeness? She taught me this lesson!
That D's parents suggested he establish a phone relationship with his distant, elderly grandmother, because otherwise she'd leave everything to his brother, insulted him in the same way.
We have no right to someone else's stuff, or money. Nor can we be bought with it. There either is or is not a relationship already there, and may or may not be a gift, but those are independent variables.
I'd always assumed there would be nothing left when my parents died. There was little enough when I lived there. I still don't know that there will be anything. I don't care.
5 comments:
Working with bereaved people I see some terrible consequences of post-death avarice.
None of us needs 'stuff', and I am trying to get rid of mine by giving it to people before I kick the bucket.
My relationship with my father was not of the best, as you might have gathered from Gwynt. I think one of the most ruinous things about my relationship with my mother (and there wasn't much of anything worthwhile to begin with) was that whilst I was in the RAF, after hoarding my father's belonging for two or three years, she gave it all away to a preacher friend of hers.
Those belongings included high quality woodworking tools, and all his books - so precious. Her reasons for so doing were all based on the massive inferiority complex she had, and more.
Sorry about the rant! I never could gain anything positive from my mother. One day all the baggage will go, but I'm not there yet.
RR,
Stopped a son and daughter arguing over an inheritance, over their dying mother. Literally, each on a side of her bed, just short of shouting. I ordered them out of the room and told them off firmly.
Tom,
Problem is, the stuff will never make up for lack of parental attachment. The things, however wonderful, useful, valuable, are just things. Loss is inevitable, human malice or indifference, fire, flood, forgetfulness, same result.
My parents have taken a reverse mortgage on their home which basically means when they die, the bank owns the house, and in the mean time, they get payments from the bank each month that is allowing them to travel and do fun things. I and my siblings have not really expected anything.
Phil,
Good for all of you. Them for taking care of themselves, you for considering that perfectly rational. And no thing will hang over everyone's heads.
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