Estate Planning

In my half-waking dream, I’m trying to help my mother – “There’s something wrong with the computer” the recurring complaint.  Sometimes it’s problem without an immediately obvious fix (how to get rid of the automatic capitalization at the beginning of each line), sometimes she’s close to panic about “not being able to find her emails” when she has merely re-sorted her in-box alphabetically by subject line with an errant click of the mouse.

Small things go missing each week.  How to email a picture of her birthday cake to her friend in California.  The name of a plant that has resided in her resplendent gardens for over 30 years.  What her doctor instructed regarding checking her blood pressure at home.  The cliché is also true; long-ago memories of things I never knew are coming to the fore.  That some 60 years ago the CIA tried to recruit my father (at the time a newly-minted PhD in Physics).  That my parents had known each other only 7 months before getting married.

My brothers and I update one another in our group chat.  We scheme to wrest responsibility for leaf-raking from her hands by conspiring a fake, low, price with the lawn guy.  We argue about which medical alert device she will be most likely to actually use.  We confirm title transfer of her house from her and my late father’s ownership to that of her newly-formed trust.

She frets about dealing with all her “stuff.”  She gives me coats that have hung in her closet for 40 years, insistent that “someone can still use it.”  She dismantles her sewing room and gives away yards of fabric, although the racks for spools of thread, made by my father 50 years ago, remain, displaying a kaleidoscope of colors.  She wants to know how I (as Executrix) will ever manage selling the furniture, and whether it will delay the selling of the house.  What do you care?  I tease her.  It’ll be my problem, not yours.  Don’t worry about it.

What gives me pause is the baby grand piano. 

The piano was much too large (even with legs removed) to fit through the door of the house.  I have a dim childhood memory of workmen at the bottom of the driveway, behind the house, hoisting its unwieldy bulk with a crane and straps through the second-floor picture window in the living room.  Glossy black, what a symbol of luxury this must have been to both of my parents, raised as they both were in relatively reduced circumstances.  I learned to play on this glorious, glamorous instrument, coming to love the Russian classical composers that my father loved.  Silent for decades now, its current function is to display a collection of beautifully framed family photos across four-plus generations.

As my half-waking dream slides from helping my mother with the computer - her inability to even describe the problem to me - into wakefulness, I think about the piano.  It will make sense to leave most of the furniture and fixtures in place until the house is under contract for staging purposes, but how the hell do we get the piano out of there when the time comes?  And where will it go? 

My subconscious is trying to plan ahead, eliding over the part where she may need to move out of her home while still alive.  Ridiculously healthy for her age (well past 80), I often joke that she will outlive us all.  Ever practical, she muses that a quick, clean stroke would be infinitely preferable to prolonged illness, disability, and wasting.  She nursed my father -- at home, on hospice care, for 9 grueling months -- before he died, leaving significant trauma and a determination to never put any of us kids in that position.

But you never know.  I brace myself to face the challenges the next (hopefully several) years will bring, and silently importune the universe to keep me healthy enough to handle it all.  I would like to spare her the inevitability of a second kidney transplant (if lucky enough) for me, and when she asks about my health, I sugar-coat with no hesitation.  I assure her that the furniture will be easily dealt with through an estate sale.  I take the old coats and hang them in my closet, or quietly drop them off at Goodwill.  I find a taker for the old fabric through our neighborhood group chat. 

Edward Albee, master at illuminating the human condition in all its messiness, writes that when “we keep something in shape, we maintain its shape – whether we are proud of that shape, or not, is another matter – we keep it from falling apart.”  As the months and years advance, I hope to keep it all from falling apart, perhaps even one day to be proud of that shape.  What more can we do but try to find a school that might accept the donation of a baby grand piano and hope that it brings joy and music – and maybe some Russian composers - to a new generation?

 

What I Wish I Had Said

(I suspect no one will read this post.  But I'll know it's here.)

Over the years I have from time to time idly wondered whether I should shutter this blog for good.  I haven't written in so long, and while I loved blogging and this community, it truly feels like its time is past.  Then I get an email out of the blue from another woman who was affected by this man - a woman who found me via this blog - and I know I can't close it down.  We are a sisterhood, and leaving space for us to find one another is the least I can do.  

I received one such email in January and it was a gut-punch.  It took me several days to understand why it was hitting me so hard, but I got there eventually.  The one piece of this experience that is unresolved for me is my guilt at having not reported Gerald Klever when I could have - and wanted to.  Each email I receive forces me to face how many other women were victimized over the years because I said nothing.

So in January I mourned again, and accepted again that I have not been able to forgive myself.  I bitched a little at the Universe for bringing this up for me - again.  And I carried on.

And this week I learned what the Universe was up to.  The January email was a reminder to pay attention.  To be present and conscious and ready.  Because this week, while at a play in Philadelphia, I gradually became aware that the man sitting opposite me in the theater was Gerald Klever.

(I had seen him in court in 2008, of course.  But not face to face.  And not unexpectedly.  And prior to that, not since roughly 1983.)

If I hadn't been looking at his mug shot a month ago, I might have missed it.  As it was, I was only 90% sure that it was him.  It felt like such an invasion, that he would be in the same space as me and not be aware, and I had to know for sure.  So I followed him out into the lobby.

- Excuse me.  I think we know each other.  Are you Gerry Klever?

 -Yes.

 -I'm Ruth Fischer.  (No sign of recognition.)  From Swarthmore.

And his face fell.  And he said --

- I'm sorry.

And I turned and walked away.

And what I wish I had said is, your apology is not accepted.  Your apology will never be accepted.  I'm standing on my two damn feet and I will never accept your apology for what you did to me, for what you did to my classmates, to your family, to countless, countless other girls.  For what you did to the women who email me, decades later, to share their stories -- women I have never met and will never meet who are still processing their pain -- for all of them, on their behalf, I do not accept your apology.

In the names of all of the women, men, girls and boys of #metoo: your apology is not accepted.

To Zen, Or Not To Zen

Yesterday I was trying to make an appointment with my new acupuncturist for after work, and he asked me what was the earliest I could make it without hurrying.  And I realized, I am never not hurrying.  Hurry is my default mode.  I'm either hurrying or I'm asleep (or trying to get to sleep).

My first reaction to this realization was, holy crap, I'm always hurrying, I really ought to do something about that.  Find more zen in my life.  But then I thought, hold it, do I really have to be more zen?  Hurrying seems to work for me.  Maybe the healthier thing to do would be to embrace that truth and not feel bad that I'm not more zen?  When did zen become the default goal we should all strive for?

I do wonder.

Guns

Here's what I don't understand.  I don't understand why our national discussion around guns and gun owners' rights and gun safety don't acknowledge the simple truth that the easy availability of guns in our culture leads to more deaths.  Isn't it really just that simple?  The solution to that is FAR from simple, but cannot we all agree that the presence of guns = more deaths?

My life has been touched by gun violence three times in the last 18 months.  In one instance, the family member of a dear friend died at the end of a gun following a domestic dispute.  In another, a relative of mine defended himself against a perceived threat and unintentionally killed one of his peers.  And in another, the child of another dear friend was killed in a mass shooting by a very disturbed individual.

In each of these cases, the guns were legally obtained and easily available.  In each of these cases, death was the direct result of the easy accessibility of the guns in question.  Why aren't we asking, as a nation, how outcomes would be different if guns were not so easily accessible?  What might have been different if, in the heat of the moment, the person who ended up pulling the trigger did not have access to such an efficient killing tool?

Here's a frightening thought: over 40% of guns purchases in the US last year are not subjected to background checks.  They are purchased through loopholes, at gun shows and over the internet.

Here's another chilling fact: gun manufacturers gave over $50,000,000 to the NRA lobby last year.  (Just in case you were wondering how legislation supported by 90% of the voters was defeated in the Senate earlier this year.)

Yale University spent this gorgeous fall day in lock down while FBI and SWAT teams conducted a building-to-building search for a reported armed gunman.  How is this okay?  How are we not discussing how to limit access to guns?

There are a lot of issues at play in the US when it comes to gun violence, none of which have easy solutions.  But surely we can agree that there is no sense requiring background checks for some gun purchases, but not all.  Surely we can agree that more resources are needed to treat mental health issues.  Surely we can agree that there is too much money from gun interests polluting our political system. 

Surely we can agree that the more guns there are, the more deaths there will be.

We need to start somewhere.  We must keep this conversation going.  We must make our voices heard in Washington, and in our state capitols.  The cost of doing nothing is too great.