If you love someone, then don’t make him or her executor of your will.
It is one of the most thankless jobs. Sifting through the detritus of someone’s life is bad enough (you simply don’t need to know some things), but, then, you have to file tax returns and speak to the IRS because one never really leaves one’s affairs in order. And there are clerical errors and the wrong tax identification numbers are submitted and life gets complicated and you remember that you love this person who died peacefully knowing all was in your care, and you know he or she would never have asked this of you had he or she known what it really meant. [SIDEBAR: Ok, that was one of those crazy long sentences reserved only for established writers who look elegant in smoking jackets and cravats. I am just a journeyman lawyer. If I were Hemingway, I would continue on: “That was a damn good sentence. A f@#$ing good sentence. They opened a bottle of wine — a damn good bottle of wine — and took turns taking swigs from the bottle because they were too proud of that f$%^ing sentence to move from the table.”]
I live my life so government stays far away from me, even as I am willing to pay more in taxes for better education, health care, etc. I believe in Obama’s presidency and what he wants to accomplish because all of my grandparents were immigrants who struggled to provide a better life for their children, my parents. And my parents embody the American Dream. And I represent downward mobility or “regression to the mean” (which means that subsequent generations will achieve the stupidity of Joe the Plumber). I support the “system” because it really can work (witness my parents and their entire generation in our extended family); I just work hard not to rely on the “system”. Yet now I have to deal with the government for the taxes on the estate of a person whose life is now reduced to a spreadsheet of dividend distributions and capital gains.
Ok, worse is to be guardian of a mentally incapacitated person. I know someone who took on that burden and I believe there is a place in Heaven waiting for her after what I hope is a long, happy and healthy life on Earth. But I digress.
POB (partner of blogger) believes that, in light of all of this, we need to rethink our financial future so that we give everything away except for two nickels at the second in time immediately before our deaths. That way, no one needs to do anything for us except have a little shiva cocktail party and light a Yahrzeit candle every now and again. But the two nickels are really important to her. I think she never wants anyone to say that we didn’t have “two nickels to rub together”. Which is why I love her so. She doesn’t want a “pot to piss in” because that is too crass. She also expects “a roof over her head” so that doesn’t factor in (although she would consider a reverse mortgage so that there is no fuss about the homestead when we “go”).
She picks her aphorisms and saws to conjure a picture that we timed it all with precision and aforethought. And she wants to live — and die — by them. Of course, being the disaster planner that I am, I need to have only “two nickels to rub together” but also a sack of gold just in case. Don’t tell her I have an extra stash, ok?
I guess the point — and I do have one — is that I am one of the lucky few who can be generally self-reliant and avoid government. And, I have no expectations of an efficient government because I believe that is frankly impossible to achieve and unrealistic to expect. If we were looking for efficiencies, we would ascribe to the Wall Street model and we know how that turned out. No, government is tedious, hopelessly inefficient, and sometimes catches the do-gooders in the web of bureaucracy. It is easy to complain about government. It is hard to defend government. There is a lot of paperwork to get benefits, but remember you are asking for money from the government. It should be hard to get.
So, SOB (sister of blogger), because I love you, I will relieve you of the executrix role. You are asking, “no, really, why?” Ok the answer is: (i) you’ll torture me for it and I will never get the last word for ALL ETERNITY and (ii) Mom would not want this to come between her two girls. I believe BOB (brother of blogger) is also protected because Mom would not stand for that either.
Did you think there would be a point to this? Are you a new reader?
