PART 6 – I Wanted Someone to Tell Me What the Checks Meant, but Every Explanation I Imagined Raised Another Question

The next thing I had to confront was my own impatience.

I wanted answers immediately.

I wanted the bank to finish its review, and I wanted someone in my family to explain why Grandma had done this.

Those were two different things.

I knew the bank couldn't provide the second answer.

Still, I found myself thinking about the conversation with Edward.

He had been careful not to promise more than he could establish.

At the time, I had wanted him to be more definite.

Looking back, I was grateful he hadn't pretended to know everything.

There was no reason for him to guess at my grandmother's intentions.

He had a responsibility to the bank and to the transaction in front of him.

I had a responsibility not to confuse his professional assessment with an explanation of my family's circumstances.

That distinction should have been obvious.

It wasn't.

The amount on the check kept pulling my attention away from everything else.

Six million dollars.

I could say the number easily enough.

Understanding what it meant was another matter.

I had never organized my life around the possibility of receiving money like that.

My work had given me a familiar routine.

I taught literature.

I read student assignments.

I prepared lessons and tried to make complicated books understandable to people who often wanted nothing more than to finish their homework.

My life had not been built around a sudden change in financial circumstances.

Now I was trying to imagine what such a change would mean before the bank had even completed its review.

I caught myself doing it more than once.

Each time, I stopped.

I had no reason to plan around money that was not yet available.

More importantly, I had no explanation for why Grandma had chosen to give it to me.

I could think of ordinary reasons.

Perhaps she wanted to help the family.

Perhaps she had considered the matter carefully and decided that this was the right way to distribute what she had.

Perhaps she had a personal reason for choosing the amount.

But those were possibilities, not facts.

I didn't want to mistake a plausible explanation for a true one.

The same problem applied to the other recipients.

I couldn't assume my parents knew more than I did.

I couldn't assume Eric had been told something privately.

I couldn't assume Olivia, Aunt Diane, or Uncle Martin understood the decision any better than I did.

I had no evidence for any of those ideas.

All I had was the list of people who had received checks.

That list kept returning to me.

It made the situation feel deliberate.

Grandma had not written a check to one person and forgotten the others.

She had included six members of the family.

I couldn't ignore that.

But I couldn't explain it, either.

I realized that I was looking for certainty because uncertainty made me uncomfortable.

If I could find one clear reason for the checks, perhaps the rest of the situation would become easier to accept.

But I couldn't manufacture that reason.

The truth was that I didn't know enough.

I had to admit it.

That admission felt small, but it changed how I looked at the situation.

Instead of asking myself what Grandma must have meant, I began asking what I could actually establish.

The answer remained limited.

The check appeared genuine.

The bank had more work to do.

The other family members had also received checks.

Everything else required information I didn't have.

For the first time, I allowed that answer to stand without trying to improve it.

I could wait.

I could listen.

And when I finally learned more, I could decide what the facts meant without pretending I had known all along.

Click here to continue reading: PART 7: The More I Thought About Grandma’s Decision, the More I Realized That Receiving the Check Was Only the Beginning of My Questions