🤠 How Not Having a Will is Scary and Leads to Civil War

 Day 52:  When There is a Will There is a Way

by Edward Smith

26 Aug 2020

Wills are Unpleasant, but the Alternative is Worse

In this article I want to talk about last wills and testaments.  If you don't have one, you should probably consider getting one.   They're really easy to do.    

I'm not suggesting you're in bad health, or that I expect you to be a goner anytime soon, I just know that death is unavoidable, and I've seen what happens when you have a will in place, and I've seen what happens when you don't.  

If you can choose.   Having a will is way better.   My grandma didn't have a will.  Let me tell you her story.

My Grandmother Did Not Have a Will

My grandmother on my dad's side passed away when I was a teenager.   She was the light of my life.  She would send me packages full of homemade cookies or other baked things.  She wrote to me, and talked to me on the phone.  Even when I messed up things, I was my grandma's good boy.  

I loved my grandma.  When she passed, I lost one of the most important people in my life.   She was a good woman, and she deserved to be remembered that way.   What happened instead was not that.

Petty People Are Full of Noise

My memories of her funeral were not happy ones.  My dad and I got in a car, traveled to his childhood home, and went to a store to pick out black clothes for me to wear.   I don't really remember a lot beyond that, because we spent the rest of the time fending off relatives.   My grandmother didn't leave a will, so things were up for grabs, and people got word about her passing and began flocking in.   

These were people that I knew.  They were my family, but my grandmother's passing sparked a feeding frenzy.   My grandmother's house was seen as a cash grab.   People had turned into looters.  

Since there was no real way to know who should get what, people decided that things were theirs.  They would show up and try to take it by force.

I remember a story about my dad getting angry on the phone, because his brother and wife showed up behind his back and had gone through every book in the house looking for dollar bills pressed into the pages of the books like bookmarks.  My uncle knew my grandma hid money in that way, and he was trying to find what he could to pay off his farm debts.  

What he probably doesn't realize, is his action cost him his nephew.   He's not welcome in my home.  I don't trust him.  He was my uncle before that.  Now he's a filthy looter of my grandma's memory.   

A will could have prevented that.  It would have kept him honest, and it would have kept our relationship intact.   

Desperation Defines the Day

So to be fair.   I get why it all happened.   In the end, I don't blame anyone for their actions.  I'm just disgusted by what I witnessed.   These people had a need, and her stuff was just stuff to them.   They didn't see it as looting.   They saw it as re-purposing.   The problem is that there were no rules in place.

When I think back on it.  It wasn't even really about the stuff.  She wasn't well off.  There was no inheritance to speak of.   She didn't own valuable things, but people didn't know that.     

My grandma was a church volunteer and a woman from the depression.   The church sustained her basic needs, and most of the objects in her house were either memories or had an utilitarian use.   Her rooms were full of tin cans, newspapers, and other things like that.  Things that are usable if you are used to living a frugal life, but trash if you're anyone else.

Treasure Hunters

What irks me, is that nobody knew what to do with any of her personal effects, and that escalated the moment into chaos.  People didn't know if my grandma had anything valuable, or where the valuable things might be hidden, so they ended up tearing apart her house trying to find what they could before someone else did.  It was like a treasure hunt.   Finders keepers.  It turned good people against one another.   It became petty.

I saw people at their worst.  I learned that during funerals, grown up people can stop acting grown up.  They can become base creatures.   Predatory.  That's why you need a will.   You can't always trust people to do the right thing, unless there are rules in place.  Without a will, you'll get anarchy.   

The will tells people what they can and cannot do.   It keeps the affair clean.  It forces people to focus on what matter, and it keeps people from getting distracted by the other things that don't.   

Get a will.  Keep your family safe.    Think of it like protection.   Protect those you love. 

My grandpa had a will.  His will was a gift to us.   It made things way better, and his memory is a happy one.

Read my next article and see how that story went.