Greg and Kat's blog

My Great Aunt Alice died a year or so ago. She had been in a nursing home for a while, and had lost the stubbornness, and irascible charm that characterizes my father’s side of the family. It wasn’t a sad before-her-time passing.

She left me some money that just hit my bank account. Not an insignificant amount of money: let’s just say it’s somewhere between “I think I’ll go out for dinner tonight,” and “I think I’ll quit my job.” More like “I won’t worry so much about the number of Vancouver-Chapel Hill trips we take.”

Now, “great aunt” isn’t exactly a close relation (by my standards anyway—Kat’s family would have them over for dinner every week). Why did Alice leave me money? The answer gives great insight into the woman, and helps explain the “irascible charm” I mentioned earlier.

You see, Alice was a bit of a bitch. She was quick to anger and blunt. These are considered positive traits in the Baker side of my family—phrases like “you can’t [complete that recent construction project] that way, you idiot” are considered acceptable Christmas-dinner conversation. Unlike the rest of the family, Alice held a grudge.

An old woman doesn’t have many ways to express her grudge. She didn’t have any direct control over anybody, and my family doesn’t respond well to guilt. But, she had a will and knew how to change it. My parents knew this and didn’t care—they were nice to her because she was a kindly old woman and my father’s aunt. They knew that her will was an unpredictable roulette wheel.

By virtue of being in Vancouver, I was apparently in favour: I visited when I was home, but wasn’t ever around enough to piss her off. I think she liked Kat too. I also “fixed” her TV one time (by centring the tint and contrast controls that she had changed accidentally).

Apparently there were around a half-dozen versions of her will in her papers when she died. Wisely, nobody is offering to detail the history of their changes. My parents and an uncle received the majority of her estate—they held her power-of-attorney at the end, and weren’t above telling her when she was being a bitch. I suspect she liked that.