I spent all afternoon today getting ready to die.
Several months ago when our attorney son was home from
“Dad,” he informed me at breakfast the next morning, “you and Mom really do need to update your wills. You’d leave us kids in an awful mess if you upped and died with the ones you’ve got right now.”
The fact that our wills were written back in the 60’s when son Jon was about the age his kids are now might have something to do with the advice he gave me. At age 32, he takes a dim view of provisions that would place him and his siblings under guardianship of an uncle. I doubt their uncle would be overjoyed at that idea either.
So, in deference to my son’s legal expertise, and in deferred response to my spouse’s nagging, I finally called an attorney friend who specializes in estate planning and asked if he would assist us in drawing up new wills. Last week my lady and I consulted with him at some length.
This afternoon I sat down in my home office to do the hard part. Before you can leave your accumulated junk to somebody in a will, you have to figure out how much stuff you have to bestow. My Sunday afternoon was consumed by this project, listing long-forgotten insurance policies and dredging up legal papers for everything from my rattle-trap pickup to our timeshare in Angel Fire.
I can think of better ways to spend a day.
My lawyer son is right, of course. We do need to have our affairs in good legal shape. It would be a shame for him to have to squander the pittance he will inherit just to hire another attorney to sort out our mess.
But when I completed my inventory of assets today, more than ever I was convinced that Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
It took several pages of the attorney’s workbook to list all the goodies we own. As I look at that list tonight, I can assure you that not one item on it really matters.
Nowhere on the inventory are the names of friends, or the smiles of grandchildren. Unlisted are the principles I inherited from my godly grandparents, or our memories of my mother. If I die and leave all the things on the attorney’s summary to my kids, they will still have nothing worth having if I fail to leave them my faith.