All But Forgotten

Dying is the great leveler.

I work for an estate service these days, and I’ve seen the closing chapters of men and women on the high end of the financial spectrum up close and personal.

You may not know this, but the rich often die as unpleasantly or mundanely as the poorest of the poor, some more so. The deathbeds of the wealthy sit in rooms with loftier ceilings and more elaborate decor, but they are still deathbeds. The sheets have a higher thread count and those who lie under them are declared deceased in silk undergarments, but the process is no different.

When you’re old and sick, there are things no amount of money will buy.

“Oh no,” cry our regular readers, “not the obligatory biannual death post!” as they promptly scatter and head for the hills. Too bad, folks. If I’ve got to live through it, somebody’s probably going to hear about it. Fair deal? I will amuse myself later counting today’s pageviews on one hand. We will return you to our regular programming tomorrow at this time.

The Good Life

Back to the rich and the things they leave behind. A co-worker going through some personal effects recently remarked of our clients, “They were living the good life, weren’t they?” Their holiday photos and memorabilia lay around us. A senior couple posed for the camera, all big smiles, sunglasses and sandy beaches in the background. What the pictures don’t show is that they lived another twelve and twenty years respectively after that trip, most of it in varying degrees of illness, daily discomfort and, eventually, loneliness for the last one standing. We were in the process of auctioning off their Royal Doulton, Swarovski crystal, imported furniture, one-of-a-kind indigenous art pieces, hardcover first editions, high-end technology, coins and jewelry.

In large urban centers with many local bidders, we sometimes get decent value for these things. In smaller communities, they go at cut-rate prices to savvy online resellers and people with whom their former owners probably would not have associated in life. Usually the auction proceeds are sufficient to cover the labor costs of the team assigned to dispose of the estate, but not always. This auction took place in a small community with little or no competitive bidding, and the locals walked off with some deals that would have made their late owners spin in their graves if they could see the surprisingly low value the market attached to their once-coveted prizes.

Sure, they were living the “good life” … until the last few years when they became too infirm and ill to enjoy any of the things they owned and that in better days had insulated them from the ordinary trials of the world around them. Perhaps at that point reality began to set in, or perhaps they lived in denial until the end.

Cat’s in the Cradle

The rich have families like everyone else, but often they are too distant, too busy, too important or too uninvolved to trek across country or even down the street to deal with the detritus of mom and dad’s lives or to spend time with them in their final days. More than a few have become estranged from their parents. Many wealthy people don’t even name an heir in their wills. Regular Cat’s in the Cradle stuff, except the narrator would be crooning from beyond the grave.

The final days, weeks and even years of the lives of the wealthy are often spent in bed in the living room, as they can’t get up or down stairs anymore, attended by paid caregivers who have no investment in anything but the next paycheck, speak English as a second language (at best), and have no respect or affection for their charges. The fact that the old guy or gal in the bed used to be a judge, tycoon or editor of The Times cuts no ice with them. They change the sheets, hurl the soiled ones in a corner out of sight, and pull a fresh set out of the closet. After all, by the time they exhaust the available linen supply, they’ll either be reassigned or the guy in the bed will be in the obits. Nobody will know the difference.

Well, except me. We bin huge quantities of linens, no matter how expensive they were originally. The cost of having soiled bedding cleaned and folded is more than we’d ever get for it at auction, and even places that take donations are getting pickier about quality.

Gone, but Not Forgotten

On a happier note, three of my favorite Christians passed away in the last decade or so. For two of the three, a week at Family Camp was the most expensive vacation they ever enjoyed, and they probably worked through it, teaching the word of God or slaving in a hot kitchen to feed others. Their houses contained plenty of reading material but no first editions and next to nothing you could resell profitably. The only diamonds their wives ever saw were a few microscopic chips winking in an engagement ring many years ago. They didn’t eat $250 steak dinners in high-end restaurants; their food budgets were spent on more important things, usually on feeding a few less fortunate Christian acquaintances gathered around the dinner table. Their children didn’t get a fully-paid romp through university or college at the risk of becoming jaded about the things of God. It did not trouble them.

These folks invested themselves in the service of Christ, and when they went to be with their Lord, loved ones surrounded their hospital beds and people to whom they had been a blessing or encouragement packed church auditoriums for their memorials, hanging around for hours afterwards to catch up with old friends. Some came from hundreds of miles away to mark their reception into Christ’s presence. Their children or good friends packed up their few personal effects personally, and not just because it could be done in a day or two or because they couldn’t afford the services of the company I work for. They wanted to carry away some cheap but sentimental trinket by which to remember someone who deeply affected their lives at a spiritual level. And they will remember.

The Great Leveler

To a twenty-something from a modest Christian home comparing his parents’ lifestyle with that of the “successful” parents of his school friends, this world’s goodies and baubles can look awfully tempting and impressive. But death is the great leveler, and a life lived without Christ at its center is nothing. Less than nothing.

All its detritus gets carried away in garbage bags. I know, because I’m the one hurling those bags into the dumpster one after another. A decade later, once-proud names and legacies will be all but forgotten.