Recently my husband and I finalized our wills. It was fairly simple: we get each others’ stuff if the other dies (my husband snarkily wanted to know what, exactly, of mine he would be getting–my filthy car? my stained wardrobe?), and then it’s on to Baby. We had some light disagreement about first choice guardian, alternate guardian, alternate alternate guardian and so forth for her. Overall it was painless, though.
My main concern actually was that, apparently, you don’t get a tombstone if you are cremated. What! I wanted some kind of sign, you know. Oh well. I do have a certain fondness for cemeteries, having spent quite a bit of time as a teenager wandering morosely through them, or making poor choices with boys under their aged trees. But basically I can’t get myself too worked up over where, exactly, to spread my ashes (after I am donated to science, and definitely in lieu of burial, which grosses me out), or what kind of service to have. Obviously I want a secular one, but I didn’t put that in my will, since at this point, if I were to die, my mother would likely be in charge of the service, and she can do what makes her feel better. It’s not like I’ll care: I’ll be dead.
This attitude marks the fundamental difference between me and my husband in this area. He, a man who is not afraid of emotions, found himself rather affected by the experience of deciding upon Baby’s caretakers in the event of our demise. He was upset about how awful it would be for her to have lost her parents, and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t similarly mopey on this topic. Now, it goes without saying that I don’t want her to have to experience her parents’ deaths, yes. And I don’t want to die for my own sake. But I’m already doing pretty much everything I can not to die. It’s not like I’m dancing around, inebriated, wielding chainsaws in both hands. If something were to happen, it would be quite against my will. And if it did happen, well, I wouldn’t know, would I?: I’d be dead. It wouldn’t bother me. So why get worked up now about a feeling I’ll never be able to have?
19 March 2008 at 12:45 pm
I never bothered to make a will, especially since, at least in my state, the parents’ designation of a guardian is considered a suggestion and the courts feel free to award the kid to someone else, despite what the parents might have wished.
19 March 2008 at 12:52 pm
Yes indeed, you’d be dead. Quite refreshing, your last few sentences are.
19 March 2008 at 7:53 pm
Making wills has been on my stressing-me-out-every-time-I-think-about-it-mental-to-do-list for about 2 years now. Glad you did it!
I love your attitude, but I’m more with your husband. Those kinds of things get me mopey and anxious.
20 March 2008 at 12:26 pm
These are actually issues that I have never really thought about. I assumed that if I died, John would take care of our babies and vise versa. But what if we both died at the same time? My poor babies won’t have a home!