No, no. Everything is fine with me and E. Fantastic, actually! We're doing great. We survived another domestic apocalypse this year and came out the other side stronger, hallelujah and amen. Marriage! You're hilarious!
This particular family drama has to do with my grandma, and her will, and inheritances, and how some of us might be interested in controlling people with money, and how I'm naive and assume people are going to do the right thing, and then I feel like a chump when they don't. And how I also have to face the greed and entitlement within myself, and try to let those things go, too.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'll tell you one of my very, very private secrets, and that is that when I was fifteen or so I inherited money from my great-grandmother. This is scary to admit because then people think things about you that are somewhere in the ballpark of ParisHiltonLand and KimKardashianVille, and let me tell you those are for sure places I've never even been close to. In other words, this inheritance was not a ton of money by some standards, but by others--and I'm trying to acknowledge my tremendous privilege here--it was a lot. I didn't have direct control over it, of course, but I do remember that the money was used to buy me a car, and some clothes, and to cover some other bills as a teenager. I think it also covered my room and board for my two years of college in Idaho (the rest was covered by scholarship) and my expenses so I could study a year abroad for my final year. I wouldn't have had any of those things without that money.
That money? It was essentially my ticket to freedom, my ticket out of Idaho and into the larger world and the life I have now.
Which is somehow back here in Idaho, now. Life! You're hilarious!
I also want to say that there was lots I did on my own. I took out loans to cover grad school and worked full time the entire time. After my 21st birthday I never saw that money again. I think it atrophied on the stock market but I don't know, to be honest.
But the larger point is that my great-grandmother, who I spent a lot of time with as a little kid, left me that money, and though it ended up not being a ton of money at the end of the day, it was enough. The last few thousand of it E. and I used to put a down payment on a ramshackle squatters' house near downtown Denver, and we turned a decent profit on that when we sold it, which in turn allowed us to move up a bit in the world.
So thank you, great-grandma. My life would be unrecognizable without that. And especially: thank you for never telling me about that money, for never holding it over my head, for never using it to control me. I have seen the effects of that on other family members in other contexts, and it is ugly. How incredibly blessed I am to have never had that. And my immediate family has also been kind in never throwing it in my face, either.
To add to this incredible luck of mine, my grandma (my great-grandma's daughter for those of you not paying attention) had always also promised me an inheritance. Again, nothing major. But she owns a handful of investment properties in our neighborhood, and since I was a kid, I was told one of them would be mine.
And this week, thanks to what I see as the greed and finagling of one of my relatives, that is no longer true.
Basically, the shit that has been going down looks a whole lot like Falcon Crest, you guys.
No, I take it back. It's definitely more like Dynasty.
Get your 80s references straight!
I had no idea how it could be. I also realize it's crass to talk about inheritances before someone has passed, or to bemoan someone else getting theirs. It wasn't my choice to open these cans of worms, I promise you that. But this is my life at the moment, and I try to bring honesty to the blog. Because this shit happens.
You've figured out by now that my gram is still alive, but she's not in good shape, which is how some of this stuff came up to begin with. She doesn't leave her bed much, she's on oxygen, and she's not really of sound mind, though she is pretty lucid. She has almost died several times this year but somehow keeps beating the odds to come back. But this makes it very difficult to determine what it is she wants, and whether she's being manipulated, or if she is in fact the manipulator, which she has been known to be. I go see her several times a week and try to help grocery shop, do laundry, and generally keep an eye on her, but let's be real. I'm not a full-time nurse, and she won't allow one in the house, so things are in rough shape over there. I don't want to be having conversations about money and wills and who gets what. It makes me so uncomfortable.
But this is the hard part to admit: I will say that having a rental property would have helped us out a lot. I did think about it occasionally and dream. We've seen a lot of our friends have them and it provides some extra security that we could use right now.
But the bottom line is we are just fine without it, and always will be. Who knows? Maybe we will have one at some point. Or maybe our life is just crazy complicated enough without it, and I should be thanking my lucky stars. Like I said: life is hilarious! Who can predict?
What I do know is that I wouldn't trade one second of the freedom I've had these last twenty years for a house, or a camper, or a ring, or whatever else I thought was mine but now, overnight, is not. I had to do some mega-processing on the whole thing because, like I said, I'm not immune myself to greed and wanting. The one Big Solution looked tempting, the deus ex machina come to save the day. But this is not it, and releasing that--and the drama that goes along with--has felt fantastic.
I'm also glad I had a chance to write here about how incredibly lucky I have been, and what an amazing life I've been able to lead, and how happy I am to be here with my family, and our extended family, and our friends, who have shown us tremendous love and acceptance. Those things make me feel super-rich.
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