Nikki is so tired of pulling cash from random places. She found $200 rolled inside a pair of pantyhose that were stuffed beneath a stack of meticulously cut out coupons. The coupons had expired back in the 90's. Then there was $360 in crisp $20 bills folded inside a dusty circa 1985 suitcase's zipper pocket.
She almost, accidentally, threw out $147. The wad was hidden in a yellowed church picnic flyer. That church doesn't exist anymore. Which is why she was going to just throw the flyer away.
Now, Nikki has discovered what she can only assume is a belated wedding present of 250 bucks placed in an envelope with some of her wedding photos. This realization is exceptionally jarring. It helps her understand how bad things got. Lynne, Nikki's mom, never learned about investing, but she had always been an excellent saver. Pristine with her loot. But in the end, Alzheimer's had Lynne turning anything into a savings account. Those who knew Lynne best would guess that was her horror.
Trust nothing, Nikki reminds herself. Nothing is as it seems in your parents' house.
She can't let her guard down. She has to comb through the entirety of her inheritance. Her parents are dead. The house, and its archive, is what remains. All this hidden cash makes Nikki wonder if her folks could have had a portfolio of assets. She feels some sort of strange nostalgia for what her family could have known about wealth, but never learned. They're the first in their bloodline to have a shot at generational wealth. Nikki is getting most of her financial education through social media and books.
This home is the extent of Lynne and Walt's estate planning, and it requires a deep excavation. Nikki adjusts her bonnet to make sure it covers her curls from the dust stirred by her rummaging.
Her bitterness rises. The inevitable is more overwhelming than she'd expected. This doesn't mean she isn't grateful. Nikki has plenty of friends whose parents didn't have a house— or anything else— to leave them. Even more friends had to rush their elderly mom or dad into assisted living, liquidate everything super fast, somehow manage to keep raising their small kids and working their full-time jobs while not dying from their own exhaustion. And there are the friends who had to endure long-term illness for years more than Nikki. They had to bankrupt their own parents in order to qualify them for Medicaid so that the extremely costly nursing home costs were covered. Meanwhile, here's Nikki's butt feeling sorry for her little self. Of course she's grateful, but she'd rather be grieving.
Lynne got sick before the dementia could kill her. She was hospitalized, trached and given a feeding tube, then sent to long-term acute care, then to a nursing home where she pulled her tubes out, so she went back to the hospital. She repeated that series of events three times before ending up in the rehab center where she finally let go.
It was 14 months of Nikki getting calls from hospital staff at 2AM, flying back and forth between her home in LA and her parents' home in Greensboro, North Carolina. 14 months of remote work, trying to comfort her dad, maintaining her composure, missing her hubby Rob, and watching her mom get smaller each day in that tiny bed. So when Lynne died, it felt like mercy. Walt died of heartbreak three weeks after Lynne. That felt unavoidable.
Right now, she's not thinking about any of that. Nikki's looking around this house project that she's been putting off. She's feeling alone even as friends call to check in and folks offer to fly out from LA just to help her clear the hoard. When in survival mode, Nikki's never been the best at asking for help. That requires a skill of believing your future self won't be devoured upon revealing your soft underbelly.
The anxiety makes her stomach hurt. Yet, she's too distracted to notice it gurgling. She bends over to pick up a yet unexplored box when she feels something move inside her. Suddenly, Nikki farts a trumpeted note so loud and sharp that it makes her jump. As if someone else did it. OK, girl, now you're scaring your damn self. Calm down.
Since her circumstances can't change, Nikki works on adjusting her attitude. She looks around the accumulation, unchecked for decades. She inhales quickly and exhales slowly. She needs to recognize this dwelling as a repository of courage.
She knows how to remember. Lynne and Walt survived Jim Crow. They survived the audacity of the U.S., while still owing 40 acres and a mule, seeing fit to sanction 90 years of legal segregation. Claim separate but equal. Impose lack of access to pretty much everything in life. And when it was over, when Civil Rights came into law, the nation didn't even cut a direct check to any of the survivors.
So Nikki's parents made their own reparations. They became the first Black family to buy a house in this neighborhood. They got the corner lot at the top of the hill. It was a gutsy move: how the two of them went about building a life unflinching.
Walt kept the lawn green and lush. Until he couldn't anymore. Lynne kept the house perpetually ready to throw a state dinner. Until she couldn't anymore.
During the pandemic, like many older among us, they didn't do so well. The isolation made them decline faster. The roof needs some fixing. The foundation is suffering, too. Stress cracks the bricks. The duo became house rich and cash poor in their golden years. Regardless, their reclamation of abundance, and all their hopes for Nikki, hug the air around the clutter and disrepair she faces.
Nikki has stacked the found money on the kitchen table. She sits where her mom used to sit and looks out the floor length window at the bushy evergreens meeting blue sky. What to do? What to do?
For a moment, her mind floats back to resistance. How Lynne and Walt refused to downsize. They wouldn't move closer to Nikki. Some things happened quickly. Other stuff was slow, the way that dripping water erodes rock. Playful memories jut in. Nikki remembers when her dad would call money smackeroos with at least four o's as in "Check out all these smackeroooos." She giggles as her thoughts claw their way back to love.
It strikes Nikki. Perhaps this isn't a duty. Maybe this is her opportunity. What if I can make it all work? Everything they've left me, the good, the bad, the chaos and the courage?
At this moment, courage feels like another word for hope. Hope is honored by action. Those actions birth the future. That future heals the ancestors.
She straightens her back. I, too, am unflinching.
She picks up one of the stacks she has created on the table. Balances it in her palm. She measures its gravity. It's not a ton, but it's wondrous. She splits her bills into two territories. One side will go in her IRA. The other will become blue chip stocks. Nikki envisions it, determined. She's still learning about how to believe in her future. This is as good a time as any to build that muscle.
Rob is flying in this evening. The two will have one week to finish going through and throwing out. Soon, there will be estate sales and the house will find a new family. It will be sold to the next owner fully emptied. Nikki plans to take all that courage with her.