If the ability to laugh and smile, cry and cower all at the same time is an indication of the complex emotions motherhood has in store, then I experienced that joy and pain for the first time last night while writing my will.
I’m not comfortable with the idea of death anyway, but the thought of my death packaged alongside my child’s birth was a little too much to handle.
The truth is that my husband and I should have had wills prepared anyway and it shouldn’t have been something that I had to check off my to-do list before going to the hospital, but we’re amongst the more than half of Americans who do not have wills, according to the American Bar Association.
We own little property so for ease and speed we used a software program and standard forms – a functional fill in the blank endeavor.
Most of the questions were easy. We know our address and full names. If I die, Max can deal with everything. If he dies, I’ll take the reins.
But the arrangements. Funeral arrangements. Where do I want to be buried? I’m supposed to be readying my life for a baby not considering where my shell of a body should rest once my spirit leaves this earth.
But that’s part of the game as well – considering the future, good or bad, and making arrangements.
The hardest realization (biggest cry) was that I would want life to go on. That I would want my husband to remarry and would want my child to know a mother. And if that happens, there will be another family in the future to share a gravesite with.
The silliest moment (biggest laugh) was my husband’s recommendation that I could consider a Viking funeral if I do not want to be buried beneath a solitary headstone in a cemetery for a number of years until someone else dies and can join me there. I could be pushed out to sea in a fiery boat instead. (This may not be a bad idea.)
We decided that the surviving partner could make appropriate arrangements depending on the situation and left it at that. Now all we have to do it sign in front of witnesses and we’ll be finished with wills for a while.
In the meantime, I’ll try to remember that fewer women die in childbirth now than they did 100 years ago (although the rate has increased) and that the will is a precaution. A heart-wrenching, life-affirming precaution.
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