I kept repeating the names in my head.<\/p>\n
My parents.<\/p>\n
Eric.<\/p>\n
Olivia.<\/p>\n
Aunt Diane.<\/p>\n
Uncle Martin.<\/p>\n
Me.<\/p>\n
Six people.<\/p>\n
One grandmother.<\/p>\n
A decision none of us could fully explain from the information I had.<\/p>\n
The list was simple enough to remember.<\/p>\n
What it represented was not.<\/p>\n
I wondered why Grandma had chosen those particular recipients.<\/p>\n
Then I caught myself.<\/p>\n
They were her family.<\/p>\n
That much was obvious.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't say whether there was another reason behind the selection.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what she had considered when she made the decision.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether she had weighed everyone's circumstances.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether the checks had been planned long before they were written.<\/p>\n
The questions kept multiplying.<\/p>\n
Every time I tried to answer one, I found another question waiting behind it.<\/p>\n
That was how I knew I needed to slow down.<\/p>\n
I had no new facts.<\/p>\n
Thinking about the same facts in a different order wouldn't magically reveal something I hadn't been told.<\/p>\n
It might make me feel busy.<\/p>\n
It wouldn't make me more informed.<\/p>\n
I had to admit that.<\/p>\n
There was a part of me that wanted to believe the checks had a simple explanation.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Grandma had saved money and decided she wanted to share it.<\/p>\n
Perhaps she had reached a point in her life when she wanted to make a substantial gift to the family.<\/p>\n
Those possibilities seemed reasonable.<\/p>\n
They were also unconfirmed.<\/p>\n
I couldn't honestly tell anyone that either explanation was true.<\/p>\n
The amount on my check was real enough to deserve attention, but the reason behind it remained unknown.<\/p>\n
I needed to keep those things separate.<\/p>\n
The bank had its own questions to resolve.<\/p>\n
It needed to complete the additional verification and approvals before the funds could become available.<\/p>\n
That process wasn't something I could skip simply because I wanted an answer.<\/p>\n
Edward had explained it without making the situation sound personal.<\/p>\n
I had appreciated that.<\/p>\n
He hadn't suggested that I was doing anything wrong.<\/p>\n
He had explained that unusually large transactions required additional care.<\/p>\n
There was nothing unreasonable about that.<\/p>\n
In fact, I would have been more concerned if the bank had treated the check casually.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars was not a routine deposit for someone in my circumstances.<\/p>\n
The bank was right to examine it carefully.<\/p>\n
I had to remind myself of that whenever the waiting began to feel like an obstacle.<\/p>\n
I wanted the transaction completed.<\/p>\n
But wanting it completed didn't make the procedures unnecessary.<\/p>\n
And even if the bank finished its work, I would still have the larger questions about Grandma.<\/p>\n
The two matters were connected, but they weren't interchangeable.<\/p>\n
A completed review could tell me more about the transaction.<\/p>\n
It couldn't tell me what my grandmother had been thinking.<\/p>\n
I found myself wondering whether she had anticipated this moment.<\/p>\n
Had she imagined me sitting in a bank office, staring at the check while a manager explained why it couldn't simply be processed like an ordinary payment?<\/p>\n
Had she expected me to question the amount?<\/p>\n
Had she understood how difficult it would be for me to reconcile the check with everything I thought I knew about her?<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer.<\/p>\n
I didn't even know whether she had considered those specific questions.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to understand that I could spend an entire day imagining my grandmother's thoughts without getting any closer to the truth.<\/p>\n
That realization brought a little embarrassment.<\/p>\n
I had always considered myself a practical person.<\/p>\n
I preferred evidence to speculation.<\/p>\n
I liked knowing what I could establish before deciding what something meant.<\/p>\n
Yet here I was, trying to build an explanation out of possibilities.<\/p>\n
The amount had unsettled me enough to make me abandon my usual caution.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to keep doing that.<\/p>\n
So I returned to what I knew.<\/p>\n
Grandma had written the check.<\/p>\n
The bank's initial examination supported its legitimacy.<\/p>\n
The transaction still required further review.<\/p>\n
Other members of the family had received checks.<\/p>\n
That was the extent of my reliable understanding.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a complete account of what had happened.<\/p>\n
It was an honest starting point.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I began to accept that I didn't have to know the entire story before I could acknowledge what was in front of me.<\/p>\n
I could wait for the bank.<\/p>\n
I could refrain from guessing about my relatives.<\/p>\n
And I could recognize that my grandmother's decision might have a meaning I hadn't yet understood.<\/p>\n
I didn't have to invent that meaning in advance.<\/p>\n
I kept repeating the names in my head. My parents. Eric. Olivia. Aunt Diane. Uncle Martin. Me. Six people. One grandmother. A decision none of us could fully explain from … <\/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-39249","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\/39249","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=39249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39269,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39249\/revisions\/39269"}],"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=39249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}