I was born on December 29th, 1971.
I used to keep that date hidden from social media. Partly because I never cared for the caravan of drive-by birthday greetings on Facebook; but also as a method of fortifying that invisible border between what I felt was private, and what I was prepared to display on my digital front stoop.
Since Thursday last, I put less importance on guarding such insignificant details.
Thursday last, my wife and I began the process of assembling an official Last Will and Testament.
Reader by h.koppdelaney
We are both in excellent health; but, as we age, we receive more constant (and less subtle) reminders of our mortality.
Our children have already attended five funerals: two great uncles; a great aunt; a great-grandmother; and the father of my closest friend.
At each of these gatherings, conversation naturally sways away from what is new, and more towards what is old. My peers and I realize that, though most of us are only in our 40's, life's pace is no longer too slow, as when we were children and students, but now has a step or two on us.
We analyze our bodies not by what is growing, but by what is receding.
Being the architect of your Last Will forces you to shift from foraging to conservation: it is a time to consider not what is left to acquire, but rather what can be lost.
Leaving the notary's office, our intellects and emotions concocted a brew of logic and worry.
Although assuaged that our wishes were now clear, and that our children would be looked after according to our wishes, being asked so many questions concerning possible illnesses and inevitable death convinces one that such a fate will become you at any moment.
Getting on a plane without my children never seemed so foolhardy as after beginning the machinations of a notarial Will.
Our children are 8 and 6 years old.
Since becoming parents, we have been reminded at semi-regular intervals - mostly by our parents - of the importance of providing for the needs of our children should we no longer be alive, or able, to care for them.
"A Will??" we thought.
We've only just become parents!
Let us deal with sleeplessness, feeding, meconium, whooping cough, fifths disease, teething, walking, falling, talking, running and fevers first, OK?
Eight years into caring for our children, we finally realized how careless it was to not consider who might care for them when we are gone.
The notary's questions only emphasized the mess our families would have been left to tidy without any direction:
If one of you should die, do you want your spouse to have complete control over your family's assets?
If only one of you should be gravely ill, does your spouse have the legal power to make the ultimate decisions concerning life support or palliative care?
If you both die, who cares for your children? And where?
Who controls finances for your children?
At what age may your children control their own finances?
Should the people you have named as primary caregivers not be able to fulfill that role, what then?
And on, and on.
As important as these decisions are, it is most important to understand these measures may be required at any moment. Yes. Today, or tomorrow, or not for decades.
I am as relieved to have these questions answered for my children's benefit as I am saddened to imagine them being guided through the morbid process of packing suitcases and spending their lives in a home other than the one they know today.
Perhaps that is why this discussion, this visit to talk about sickness and death, was delayed for nearly a decade.
'Death' is an ugly word.
But, for an 8 and 6 year-old who have just lost their parents; two words are just as ugly: 'uncertainty' and 'loneliness'.
While this Will forced me to consider my own death; it also forced me to consider something far more important: my children's life.
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