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This may be the story of any family, anywhere.
The call from the hospital came a little after eleven at night.
I stood with the phone in my hand, unable to move for a while.
Outside the window, it was raining.
When I arrived, my older brother was already there.
He was sitting on a bench in the corridor, head bowed.
I said his name, and he looked up.
His eyes were red.
That told me everything.
I opened the door of the private room. Father was lying there.
He looked as though he had simply fallen asleep.
His sleeping face was peaceful.
My brother and I stayed silent for a long time.
After a while, a nurse came in.
“Have you decided on a funeral home?”
We hadn’t.
“If you’d like, we can recommend one.”
My brother nodded.
I nodded too.
We didn’t know, then, that there were other choices.
The next morning, someone from the funeral home came.
He moved things along briskly.
The grade of the coffin, the size of the altar, the kind of flowers.
One option after another was laid before us.
In the middle of our grief, we were pressed to decide.
“This is the plan most families choose.”
Put that way, there was nothing to do but take it.
My brother signed the papers.
I nodded beside him.
In the middle of our grief, before we knew it, everything had been decided.
We thought we had chosen. Perhaps we hadn’t.
The funeral was over, and the forty-ninth day had passed.
Then the talk of inheritance began.
The man from the funeral home got in touch: “We can introduce you to a judicial scrivener.”
Another introduction.
In the living room of the house we grew up in, my brother and I sat facing each other.
Father’s bankbooks and the deed to the land lay side by side on the table.
We had never talked about any of this with Father while he was alive.
He never let us.
“Don’t talk about such unlucky things.”
That was the kind of man he was.
But now, we were the ones paying for those words.
The talks dragged on.
Little by little, our words grew sharp.
When we were kids, we often played pool.
The pool hall by the station, where Father used to take us.
My brother was clumsy, and his balls rarely went in.
But he never gave up.
He got down on the shot again and again, and struck again.
Every time he missed, we laughed.
Every time one went in, we laughed again.
Father was laughing beside us, too.
Back then, we stood around the same table, laughing.
Now we sat on either side of the same table, facing each other.
No laughter.
No Father, either.
On the table lay only the bankbooks and the deed.
Without a word, my brother stood up.
Only the bankbooks were left behind on the table.
I had thought we were close.
In grief, people cannot only be kind.
Father couldn’t have known.
That after he was gone, his sons would end up like this.
If he had known, he might have prepared something for us.
He was a man who made you want to believe that.
Only later did I learn.
There was far more one could prepare while still alive than I had thought.
A will.
Putting one’s assets in order.
Telling the family, ahead of time, what one wishes.
That day at the hospital, we had no room to turn down the funeral home we were introduced to.
With the inheritance too, we had no choice but to rely on the professionals we were introduced to.
What we truly needed was not to be introduced to someone.
Not to decide because someone introduced us, but for Father himself to have decided, ahead of time.
Losing a parent is, for a child, more than enough sorrow.
We would not want anything to deepen that sorrow.
If it means even one fewer pair of brothers like the two of us that day.
On the night all the paperwork was finally done, my brother got in touch.
“Been a while. Want to shoot some pool?”
That was all.
I wrote back at once.
“I’m in.”
It felt as if the time that had stopped since that night had begun, just a little, to move again.
For advice on inheritance, wills, and putting your affairs in order while you are alive, please talk to SANSIAS.
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