Cafe Hitch-hike

2022-06-07

Progressions

Alrighty then. I met with an attorney who is preparing a trust and other end of life plans for me. I don't plan on leaving anytime soon, but thanks to inflated housing values, and to make transferring any type of profit or equity to my family, I have more to leave behind than my memory. I took this step. I'd also like to thank my beloved slacker friend, Herr Carlo who went to greet St. Pete last week.

Some of what Uncle Joe left me is being used for this. I'm also doing this so my matters won't be as confusing or distressing to anyone I leave behind. Nothing will need to go through the probate court. People would just need to wait for a little bit rather than very long for the money to be given and that is it.

I decided it would be split equally between my mother and siblings. They have no idea what the current possible value is, they'd be happy to receive $100. With that, I won't say much to them about the estimated present-day value or even that they may get anything. I can't take these bits with me whenever I go, and they never got anything from anyone (my younger siblings, with the exception of their father's favorite, didn't get anything from their father when he died). Uncle left me something which highly benefitted me, so I simply decided to pass it along.

I can't take it with me. Ideally if I go before them, it could help them but I'm aware it may not. But, that's not my deal after a certain point. My siblings and mother can do whatever they want. Start a business, buy a used car, go on a brilliant adventure, it's on them.

Since I am unmarried, I now have a feeling I somehow will acquire a spouse. I figure because then these details will need to be changed and that's the way it goes, hah. As they say, when we make plans, life laughs. Because of this, perhaps it is likely I will outlive all of my siblings. At least I have something in place in the meantime.

I'm not afraid to say this openly. It doesn't make the possibility of my end of life more frightening at least not yet. I've known for a long time that this is temporary. Talking about it doesn't make it any more or less likely to happen quicker. It's simply a plan made at this time and place.

I made a memorial collage for Carlo with pics from our times in London and Germany. I was amazed that I had that much to represent his life. I had pics of his childhood home, his mother (who I met, the fashionable Mathilde) and us a Christmas market in his town. I had a pic of him at the Marienberg Fortress with a beautiful pic of The Little Chapel across the valley. This was in Wurzburg. It was one of the best pictures I have of him. I was just touched to realize I had enough to give a composite of his life and the things he liked.

I played some music he liked (Andre Rieu, whose music I never want to hear again), I left a beverage by the pics (a different alcoholic one for 3 days) and prayed the rosary (he was Catholic). I read a verse read at my birth father's funeral because it was appropriate: it was about going to God after a long struggle.

I guess these were things I picked up along the way to deal with bereavement, but a part of me also wonders what was... instinctual. No one in my family wore veils for anything except first communion and a wedding. I wore a black one while I composed Carlo's collage and the mini-Catholic ceremony. I looked like some Mediterranean female mourner in a black and white film. I never dressed that way for any funeral, but for some reason, it was fitting for him. Some say funerals are for both the living and the deceased. I guess this was my way of dressing in event-appropriate costume so if he sees, he would know.

I knew this would come for a long time, but I was never sure how it would be until it happened, and yet I didn't think much about it. Like a birth, it progressed largely on its own.

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