On Death, Inheritance, Valuing Love With Material Things, Probably More But It's 3AM...
I started to write this into a tweet box, but then I looked up and it was >4000 characters and I thought, “that's a lot of tweets,” so it's going here instead. I'm not sure anyone really uses Dreamwidth anymore, it seems pretty dead to me, I might just be sending this out into the void, but. Oh well.
So I talked with my dad, and it looks like there’s some leftover money in my grandmother’s estate which he’s willing to set aside for me to get LASIK. And I’d like to say I don’t care, that if it’s not coming directly out of my bank account, it shouldn’t matter where the money’s coming from. It should help with my migraines, and also the fact that I break glasses like it’s going out of style, and I should just be grateful I don’t have to finance it myself. Objectively, it doesn’t really matter. Except…it does. That means a lot to me.
My grandmother was really the only extended family member I was truly CLOSE with. (I actually just typed “is” and “am” instead of “was.” She’s been gone over a year. Death is so strange.) I loved her a lot-and I’m not very close with most of my family. I’m not much of a family person, never have been. But I truly adored my grandmother. And it’s probably not a coincidence that I felt like this, because she didn’t do a very good job of hiding that I was her Favorite. (Me and my sisters were her only grandchildren, and one of them was barely 2 when she died, she was already post-strokes, she hardly knew her. The other…well. I was the oldest. I was The First. And I was named for her mother. That was pretty important to her.)
I was supposed to get her car. This was always The Plan. That was the idea when she bought it. But life is funny, and she was a stubborn old bitch, and she held on a little too long, and I bought a new car of my own not 2 years before she died.
So I waived the car to my sister. She got her license this summer, and she had been practicing for it at the time, and she’d been preparing to graduate from college this year, and I had a <2yo car I was still paying on, and it just made sense. But it meant that other than her ridiculous collection of teaspoons-which my grandmother loved and told me many times she was leaving to me and everyone else in the family thought were hideous and I will never get rid of them but they’re in storage because it’s a TEASPOON COLLECTION-she didn’t actually leave anything to me. Oh, sure, I took some things out of her house for myself while we were cleaning it, with my father and uncle’s permission-an old typewriter that I used to write fanfiction on back in the day when I spent my summers with her, a giant glass bottle with SCOTCH written on the side, a white gold ring that I wear every day that’s probably actually worth a little money but not a ton, a pencil portrait of her that hung in her guest room-but nothing, other than those teaspoons (which meant a lot to her, and she really just wanted to make sure my dad and uncle didn’t dump them in an estate sale) that she really left as a last gift TO *ME*, the favorite grandchild. The car was supposed to be her last way of taking care of me, but that didn’t pan out. So I didn’t get anything of value, despite the fact that she had Money. Not MONEY money but. Money.
And that didn’t bother me. Still doesn’t. But.
My dad said, “there’s some money left in the estate, if Conde’s okay with it, let’s use it for this. She would have wanted this money to go to this, if she were alive-she’d have offered to pay for it. She would want this for you.” And she WOULD have, really. And unexpectedly, this made me cry.
Because I didn’t get the car, and this isn’t actually medically ESSENTIAL but it will improve my quality of life (especially, at this point, I’m willing to try ANYTHING that reduces contributing factors to my migraines), and she would have wanted me to have it and it feels so APPROPRIATE that this is the last thing she’ll buy me, even though objectively, it’s no more given than the ring I took from her jewelry cabinet after she died, which I really do wear every day and treasure very much. It…it FEELS like a Last Gift. I’m not quite sure why, but there you are. Emotions are funny. Death is strange.
I don’t quite know where I’m going with all of this, but it’s 2:45 AM and I need to be at work in nearly seven hours, and I’m lying in bed and crying about my grandmother’s death for the first time since the funeral thirteen months ago. So I’ll simply say, goodnight Great Wide Internet.
Goodnight.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth here. There are
comments over there.
So I talked with my dad, and it looks like there’s some leftover money in my grandmother’s estate which he’s willing to set aside for me to get LASIK. And I’d like to say I don’t care, that if it’s not coming directly out of my bank account, it shouldn’t matter where the money’s coming from. It should help with my migraines, and also the fact that I break glasses like it’s going out of style, and I should just be grateful I don’t have to finance it myself. Objectively, it doesn’t really matter. Except…it does. That means a lot to me.
My grandmother was really the only extended family member I was truly CLOSE with. (I actually just typed “is” and “am” instead of “was.” She’s been gone over a year. Death is so strange.) I loved her a lot-and I’m not very close with most of my family. I’m not much of a family person, never have been. But I truly adored my grandmother. And it’s probably not a coincidence that I felt like this, because she didn’t do a very good job of hiding that I was her Favorite. (Me and my sisters were her only grandchildren, and one of them was barely 2 when she died, she was already post-strokes, she hardly knew her. The other…well. I was the oldest. I was The First. And I was named for her mother. That was pretty important to her.)
I was supposed to get her car. This was always The Plan. That was the idea when she bought it. But life is funny, and she was a stubborn old bitch, and she held on a little too long, and I bought a new car of my own not 2 years before she died.
So I waived the car to my sister. She got her license this summer, and she had been practicing for it at the time, and she’d been preparing to graduate from college this year, and I had a <2yo car I was still paying on, and it just made sense. But it meant that other than her ridiculous collection of teaspoons-which my grandmother loved and told me many times she was leaving to me and everyone else in the family thought were hideous and I will never get rid of them but they’re in storage because it’s a TEASPOON COLLECTION-she didn’t actually leave anything to me. Oh, sure, I took some things out of her house for myself while we were cleaning it, with my father and uncle’s permission-an old typewriter that I used to write fanfiction on back in the day when I spent my summers with her, a giant glass bottle with SCOTCH written on the side, a white gold ring that I wear every day that’s probably actually worth a little money but not a ton, a pencil portrait of her that hung in her guest room-but nothing, other than those teaspoons (which meant a lot to her, and she really just wanted to make sure my dad and uncle didn’t dump them in an estate sale) that she really left as a last gift TO *ME*, the favorite grandchild. The car was supposed to be her last way of taking care of me, but that didn’t pan out. So I didn’t get anything of value, despite the fact that she had Money. Not MONEY money but. Money.
And that didn’t bother me. Still doesn’t. But.
My dad said, “there’s some money left in the estate, if Conde’s okay with it, let’s use it for this. She would have wanted this money to go to this, if she were alive-she’d have offered to pay for it. She would want this for you.” And she WOULD have, really. And unexpectedly, this made me cry.
Because I didn’t get the car, and this isn’t actually medically ESSENTIAL but it will improve my quality of life (especially, at this point, I’m willing to try ANYTHING that reduces contributing factors to my migraines), and she would have wanted me to have it and it feels so APPROPRIATE that this is the last thing she’ll buy me, even though objectively, it’s no more given than the ring I took from her jewelry cabinet after she died, which I really do wear every day and treasure very much. It…it FEELS like a Last Gift. I’m not quite sure why, but there you are. Emotions are funny. Death is strange.
I don’t quite know where I’m going with all of this, but it’s 2:45 AM and I need to be at work in nearly seven hours, and I’m lying in bed and crying about my grandmother’s death for the first time since the funeral thirteen months ago. So I’ll simply say, goodnight Great Wide Internet.
Goodnight.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth here. There are
comments over there.