By then, I had begun to understand the limits of what I knew.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a pleasant realization.<\/p>\n
I wanted a complete explanation.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know why Grandma had written the checks and what she expected the family to do with them.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't answer those questions by studying the amount.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars told me how much she had written on my check.<\/p>\n
It didn't tell me why.<\/p>\n
The bank's findings answered a different question.<\/p>\n
The account existed.<\/p>\n
The signature matched the record.<\/p>\n
The check appeared consistent with a valid transaction.<\/p>\n
Those details mattered, but they didn't explain the decision behind it.<\/p>\n
The bank still had to complete its verification and approval process.<\/p>\n
Until then, I had to be careful about treating the money as available.<\/p>\n
That was the practical side of the situation.<\/p>\n
The personal side was more difficult.<\/p>\n
I had to accept that my understanding of Grandma was incomplete.<\/p>\n
I had known her as my grandmother for years.<\/p>\n
I had recognized her handwriting without hesitation.<\/p>\n
I had never expected to find myself questioning what I knew about her because of a check.<\/p>\n
Yet that was exactly where I had ended up.<\/p>\n
I thought about the other recipients again.<\/p>\n
My parents.<\/p>\n
Eric.<\/p>\n
Olivia.<\/p>\n
Aunt Diane.<\/p>\n
Uncle Martin.<\/p>\n
The fact that Grandma had included all of them seemed important.<\/p>\n
I simply didn't know what it meant.<\/p>\n
I couldn't decide that the checks were intended to repair something in the family.<\/p>\n
I couldn't decide that she was trying to reward us.<\/p>\n
I couldn't decide that she wanted us to make any particular choice.<\/p>\n
There was no evidence for those conclusions.<\/p>\n
I had to leave the meaning open.<\/p>\n
That was difficult for someone who spent his working life interpreting words.<\/p>\n
I was used to believing that enough attention could reveal the intention behind a sentence.<\/p>\n
But the check wasn't a passage in a novel.<\/p>\n
It was a real financial document, and my grandmother was a real person whose motives I couldn't read from a distance.<\/p>\n
I needed more than interpretation.<\/p>\n
I needed facts.<\/p>\n
So I returned to the facts I had.<\/p>\n
The bank had not dismissed the check.<\/p>\n
Edward had explained why a transaction of that size required additional examination.<\/p>\n
The process could take several business days.<\/p>\n
And Grandma had given checks to six members of the family, including me.<\/p>\n
That was enough to establish where things stood.<\/p>\n
It wasn't enough to tell me where they were going.<\/p>\n
I could wait for the bank to complete its work.<\/p>\n
I could avoid making plans based on money I couldn't yet access.<\/p>\n
I could resist telling myself that I understood my grandmother's intentions when I didn't.<\/p>\n
None of those choices answered the larger questions.<\/p>\n
They did, however, keep me from adding confusion to an already confusing situation.<\/p>\n
I realized I had been treating uncertainty as a problem I needed to solve immediately.<\/p>\n
It wasn't always something that could be solved by thinking harder.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the honest answer was simply that I didn't know.<\/p>\n
That answer frustrated me.<\/p>\n
It also gave me something solid to stand on.<\/p>\n
I didn't know why Grandma had made the decision.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what the other recipients thought about it.<\/p>\n
And I didn't know when the bank would finish the remaining steps.<\/p>\n
But I knew what Edward had told me.<\/p>\n
I knew what I had seen.<\/p>\n
And I knew I had to wait before drawing conclusions.<\/p>\n
For the moment, that was enough.<\/p>\n
The check remained a check.<\/p>\n
The signature remained familiar.<\/p>\n
The amount remained extraordinary.<\/p>\n
And the questions remained unanswered.<\/p>\n
I would have to face them one at a time, as the facts allowed.<\/p>\n
By then, I had begun to understand the limits of what I knew. It wasn't a pleasant realization. I wanted a complete explanation. I wanted to know why Grandma had … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39267,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39247\/revisions\/39267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}