I used to believe that knowing someone for years meant you understood them.<\/p>\n
I don't believe that anymore.<\/p>\n
The check had made that much clear.<\/p>\n
I knew my grandmother's handwriting.<\/p>\n
I knew the sound of her voice and the place she held in my life.<\/p>\n
But I hadn't known she could write a check for six million dollars.<\/p>\n
That fact sat between everything I remembered and everything I was trying to understand.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about how easily I had accepted my own assumptions.<\/p>\n
Grandma had never seemed wealthy to me.<\/p>\n
I had never looked at her and imagined a person capable of making a financial decision on that scale.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I had never bothered to ask the right questions.<\/p>\n
Perhaps there had never been a reason to ask them.<\/p>\n
Either way, I was left with the same problem.<\/p>\n
I knew what she had done.<\/p>\n
I didn't know why.<\/p>\n
The bank had given me its initial assessment, but the transaction still required additional verification.<\/p>\n
Edward Collins had explained the process carefully.<\/p>\n
I understood the reasons.<\/p>\n
I also understood that no amount of worrying would make the bank finish its work sooner.<\/p>\n
That didn't stop me from thinking about it.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars was too large a figure to leave in the back of my mind.<\/p>\n
It kept returning when I was trying to concentrate on something else.<\/p>\n
I would think about the amount, then remember the signature.<\/p>\n
Then I would remember the other recipients.<\/p>\n
My parents.<\/p>\n
Eric.<\/p>\n
Olivia.<\/p>\n
Aunt Diane.<\/p>\n
Uncle Martin.<\/p>\n
The list had become familiar.<\/p>\n
The reason behind it hadn't.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether Grandma had considered how each of us would react.<\/p>\n
Had she expected us to accept the checks without question?<\/p>\n
Had she anticipated that some of us might be uncomfortable?<\/p>\n
Had she understood how difficult it would be to know what to do with such an unexpected gift?<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer any of those questions.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to assume she had overlooked the consequences.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to assume she had planned for every one of them, either.<\/p>\n
I was trying to understand a decision without knowing the thoughts behind it.<\/p>\n
That was a mistake I kept making.<\/p>\n
I wanted to fill the gaps because the gaps bothered me.<\/p>\n
But an explanation didn't become true simply because it made the situation easier to understand.<\/p>\n
I had to keep reminding myself of that.<\/p>\n
The facts were still limited.<\/p>\n
The account existed.<\/p>\n
The signature matched the bank's records.<\/p>\n
The available funds were sufficient to cover the check.<\/p>\n
The bank needed to complete its review.<\/p>\n
That was what I knew from the conversation with Edward.<\/p>\n
Everything else was something I needed to learn rather than imagine.<\/p>\n
I thought about calling Grandma.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered that I hadn't established whether I would get an answer that resolved anything.<\/p>\n
Even if I could ask her directly, I would still need to be willing to hear whatever she had to say.<\/p>\n
That was an uncomfortable thought.<\/p>\n
I had been so focused on getting an explanation that I hadn't considered how much my own expectations might shape the way I heard it.<\/p>\n
I wanted a reason that made sense to me.<\/p>\n
But my grandmother wasn't obligated to have made her decision according to the assumptions I had built around her.<\/p>\n
I had to leave room for that possibility.<\/p>\n
For years, I had seen her through the ordinary details of our relationship.<\/p>\n
I hadn't considered how much of her life might exist outside those details.<\/p>\n
Now I was looking at a check that challenged my understanding of her circumstances.<\/p>\n
It didn't tell me everything.<\/p>\n
It didn't even tell me the most important thing I wanted to know.<\/p>\n
But it reminded me that I had never possessed the complete picture.<\/p>\n
I had simply become comfortable with the one I had.<\/p>\n
There was a difference.<\/p>\n
I wasn't proud of how long it had taken me to recognize it.<\/p>\n
Still, I was beginning to understand that the check wasn't just a financial document I needed the bank to examine.<\/p>\n
It was also a reason to question the certainty with which I had described someone I loved.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what I would discover next.<\/p>\n
I didn't know when the bank would complete its work.<\/p>\n
And I didn't know whether the answers I wanted would be simple or difficult.<\/p>\n
For once, I tried not to decide in advance.<\/p>\n
I had spent enough time making guesses.<\/p>\n
I needed to let the facts speak first.<\/p>\n
I used to believe that knowing someone for years meant you understood them. I don't believe that anymore. The check had made that much clear. I knew my grandmother's handwriting. … <\/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-39252","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\/39252","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=39252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39272,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39252\/revisions\/39272"}],"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=39252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}