The number had a way of taking over my thoughts.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars.<\/p>\n
I could start thinking about Grandma, and within a few moments I would be thinking about the check again.<\/p>\n
It was as if the amount had become more important than the person who had written it.<\/p>\n
I didn't like that.<\/p>\n
I didn't want money to become the only thing I noticed about my grandmother.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't deny that the check had changed how I thought about her.<\/p>\n
Before the bank visit, I had believed I understood her circumstances well enough.<\/p>\n
Afterward, I knew that my understanding had limits I hadn't recognized.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what those limits meant.<\/p>\n
I only knew they were there.<\/p>\n
I found myself wondering whether I had overlooked things about Grandma because they hadn't seemed important before.<\/p>\n
Had I assumed too much about what she could afford?<\/p>\n
Had I mistaken a familiar way of living for a complete picture of her finances?<\/p>\n
Had I simply never thought to ask?<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer those questions with certainty.<\/p>\n
What I could admit was that I had made assumptions.<\/p>\n
I had treated my impression of her as though it were the same as knowing her circumstances.<\/p>\n
It wasn't.<\/p>\n
The check had exposed that difference.<\/p>\n
I needed to be careful not to go too far in the other direction.<\/p>\n
The fact that Grandma had written a large check didn't mean every assumption I had made about her was wrong.<\/p>\n
It didn't mean I suddenly understood her better.<\/p>\n
It meant I had learned something that challenged what I thought I knew.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
I had to let the discovery remain what it was without turning it into a complete judgment of her life.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about the signature.<\/p>\n
It was such a small thing compared with the amount.<\/p>\n
Yet it was the detail that connected the check to my memories of her.<\/p>\n
The bank had compared it with the signature on file.<\/p>\n
I recognized it because I had seen her write her name before.<\/p>\n
That familiarity was real.<\/p>\n
So was my lack of understanding.<\/p>\n
For a while, I had treated those two things as if they couldn't exist together.<\/p>\n
If I knew her handwriting, I thought I should understand the person behind it.<\/p>\n
That was unreasonable.<\/p>\n
People could be close to one another without knowing every detail of each other's lives.<\/p>\n
I knew that in theory.<\/p>\n
I had been slower to accept it in my own family.<\/p>\n
The other checks made the situation even more difficult to interpret.<\/p>\n
Grandma had included my parents, Eric, Olivia, Aunt Diane, and Uncle Martin.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a decision that involved me alone.<\/p>\n
That made me wonder about the larger intention.<\/p>\n
Had she wanted to do something for the family as a whole?<\/p>\n
Had she considered each person separately?<\/p>\n
Had she arrived at the decision for reasons I hadn't imagined?<\/p>\n
I had no way to know.<\/p>\n
I could keep asking myself those questions, but I couldn't answer them honestly.<\/p>\n
I needed information I didn't have.<\/p>\n
That meant accepting that some of my questions would remain unanswered for a while.<\/p>\n
I also needed to remember that the bank's work was not a measure of Grandma's intentions.<\/p>\n
The additional verification was a normal response to an extraordinary transaction.<\/p>\n
It wasn't evidence that the check was fraudulent.<\/p>\n
It wasn't evidence that my grandmother had done anything wrong.<\/p>\n
It was a process the bank needed to complete.<\/p>\n
I had to stop treating the delay as though it were a judgment on the entire situation.<\/p>\n
Edward had explained the requirements clearly.<\/p>\n
I trusted that he was telling me what the bank needed to do.<\/p>\n
Now I needed to give the process time.<\/p>\n
I could not make the money available by worrying about it.<\/p>\n
I could not make Grandma's reasons clearer by repeating the amount to myself.<\/p>\n
And I could not make my family easier to understand by deciding what everyone else must be thinking.<\/p>\n
All I could do was remain honest about what I knew.<\/p>\n
The check appeared legitimate.<\/p>\n
The review remained unfinished.<\/p>\n
Grandma had included several members of the family.<\/p>\n
And I was still trying to understand why.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a complete answer.<\/p>\n
It was the truth.<\/p>\n
The number had a way of taking over my thoughts. Six million dollars. I could start thinking about Grandma, and within a few moments I would be thinking about the … <\/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-39254","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\/39254","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=39254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39274,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39254\/revisions\/39274"}],"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=39254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}