Assurance

Money is even harder to talk about than sex. We have gotten pretty good at talking about sex so maybe this is the next intimacy. We talked about life insurance again. I have worried about what will happen later. What will happen to me after a year of more of intensive caregiving? Will I be able to work? Need to take a leave? Work part-time? I talk to my therapist and to friends. “You need your work”, they say and I understand. I need it to stay me and to have my identity intact in the midst of caregiving and later too. “Later” of course is the euphemism. What is not so obvious is that while I can get up and shower and put on professional attire and even accessorize well (that comes naturally), and I can even show up at my desk, in meetings and even give presentations, my brain will not all be there and so little of my heart. It is, and will be, “Act As If” time.

But I do worry about the later. I will need to be able to fall apart. I want to know I can pay the rent even as I am sitting like a vegetable stunned by grief. I know that place.

In bed he asks me again about money. He says an amount. “This is what I’d like to do so that you have some money, just in case I croak”. For a few seconds I enter that place of being alive when he is not. For a few seconds I am here in this apartment and he is gone and never coming back. For a few seconds I am alone in this bed and the pain goes through my body. I believe in God; I do not think there are any accidents in life; I have surrendered him and this relationship again and again over these past few years. I do want that blessed assurance. And life insurance too.