When a parent dies, it’s not enough to grieve. When you get married, it’s not enough to get married. When you have a baby, it’s not enough to have the baby and go home.
When your mother dies, you need to sort through her stuff, keep what you want, sell or discard the rest.
See if anyone in the family wants it first, though. God forbid Auntie Ray Ray doesn’t get your mother’s rosary beads. She’ll never get off your ass about that.
And then you need to talk to the companies—all the companies: home insurance, life insurance, car insurance, 401k, banks—what the hell does a guy have to do to close out an account? How long must I wait on hold? And then you might need to sort it out with the funeral home, or the crematorium, and, God help you again—hire a lawyer to handle your mother’s probate? (Side-plug: Come see me, we can help you plan for, and get through, all of this.)
Oh and try getting married. Now you need to pick the place, the cake, the food—who not to invite. Then agonize for days about how you are going to tell that semi-close friend why they got the ax and your other semi-close friend did not. Or like me maybe you’ll just not tell the person and await the backlash when they see the wedding photos, because you would rather be your reactionary self than confront something like that head on.
And then how is everyone going to get there, where will they stay? Is that my problem or theirs? Or maybe you elope at the Justice of the Peace court to avoid all this. Well, you still need to change all your documents, don’t you. Work needs to know. Insurers need to know. I’m not even talking about what and when you post on social media. C’mon you idiot, you can’t just get married. You know better.
Or try having a child, and bringing him home, and then getting a bill from your provider that because you didn’t add your baby to your insurance plan in time, you are out of pocket $800. No, you need to remember, as soon as you get home, amidst all the wet diapers and intermittent sleep, to ensure the insurance company knows you had a baby and to add the baby to the plan—and backdate the coverage. Backdate the baby, baby.
But usually doing that on time and right away isn’t enough, because our healthcare system is the equivalent of a dark ocean with no moon overlit, made up of roughly 1 million cargo ships passing each other in the dead of winter and sending out life rafts in the form of snail mail, and one ship might not have made contact with the other ship with the proper whale sound, and so you have to get them both on sonar conference call which can take weeks to “dial it in”.
So what to do? I have no idea. All I know is that it’s a bitch to do anything Big, or have anything Big, or to have anything Big happen to you in this life.
Of course these Big moments can be triumphant and grand. And some can be devastating, immobilize you, and harden your insides. Some can steel your resolve, some can make you vomit, still others can make your life better forever. But make no mistake, these are Big moments, with a capital B, and they require more work.
What to do with that, then? My conclusion: the little things are where it’s at. Not that work is bad—all of life takes work—but it, and its Bigness, comes at a cost, especially if you park your spirit there with it.
The little moments of treasure interspersed among the Big, that’s where I’m trying to stake my claim. The grieving at a funeral with a loved one you haven’t seen in years, crying together; the way your wife looks when you bring her home a shake and fries and you both dip your fries in the same special sauce; and the mundane and silent time in between bouts of sleeplessness when you hold your baby at 2 am. None of that is Big, but it is almost everything.
Not a single one of these moments require documentation, not one of them require a form. None of them require invitations, itineraries, or irrevocable trust formation. They only require you being there, really being there. The little moments are where the magic is, and where most of life happens, anyway. Big comes with a price, with freight that needed moving, yesterday.
Oh you got promoted? Hell yeah, brother. That’s Big news. Good luck with that.
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