On the 31st of December I woke in the bedroom of my adolescence, in my parent’s home, after a night of carousing with my younger brothers. It was already 9 am and I wanted to get back home to Minneapolis for the New Year. Upstairs for coffee, and my parents had woken early and discovered an old note-book of mine, “We read your poem about signatures” they said, and I gave to them a blank look, “The one with Lunds, and Camels, and self …”, Ma said. I had no memory of the poem. [1] “The one about who’s signature is my own” she continued. I asked her if she had been reading Rumi [2] and she replied that she had not been. I resolved to find whatever she was speaking of, later, but until then, together we drank coffee and talked of other things.

Later that morning, we had to figure out how I would get home. My brother David was going to Minneapolis for the evening, and I hoped to get a ride with him. Pa observed that if there was any other business that should be taken care of, we should consider it before David and I left. We would not want to double up on trips to Minneapolis, as that would be wasteful of time and fuel, and I agreed.

Upon discussion, my dad made it clear that he wanted to sign his living will today, and that he perhaps wanted the presence of David and I to do it. I didn’t think much of it, and thought it to be more of an in-convienience more than anything– a formality, fifteen minutes between me and home. I started to pack my things into the caravan to take home from the holidays, hoping Ma would wake from her nap so that she could serve as his witness and I would be able to get home quicker.

By this time it was 11 or so. The van was packed full of the things of my childhood. Ma had woken, and David and I were ready to leave. I assumed that since she was up she could help Pa take care of his business matters with her. But, as we prepared to leave, both my parents got in their car and told David and I to meet them at the bank to sign the documents.

David and I entered the Bank as one normally would. We shared a proper humor of institutions generally old and corrupt, and made jokes of it as we looked at the pretty girls that worked there. But in a short time my parents were seated with a serious woman in her office, who would serve as a notary public for the act. David and I stood behind them and watched the proceedings.

The paperwork to be signed, simple documents explaining what and how my parents would give what they had to their children ( as if they hadn’t already explained it in a million careful moments ), upon inspection, became quite complex. Our older brother and sister had crafted the documents to conform to all legal expectations and standards, as that is their profession. Their exactness and precision in the area, their demand for clarity in such important realms- in regard to the need of witness, identification, and sheer addresses– their carefulness in paperwork was too much for us.

What had been the simple act of signing a will became laborious as we read through the documents and tried to figure out who should sign where, and why. David googled some terms on his phone. I told mom to cross out a signature and initial it, and dad to sign beneath that dotted line instead. The whole time David and I made jokes of the fact that our parents had no worldly possessions to pass on. They have no money, they are unsure of how they may retire. Their only possession worth mention in their wills, my mother’s great grand piano, is to be sold to the child who can pay the most, and the proceeds will be divided among the nine of us. We joke of the paperwork, the formality of it all, of giving nothing away. We joke of it because we know that they have already given us everything. They’ve poured their lives into us; there is not much more to be done.

It is required of the signatories that they have state issued identification. Ma and I both note that we have lost ours, we cannot be identified as ourselves by the state. Even so, she is able to sign her will, and I, though I cannot act as legal witness due to my lack of identification, served as an un-identified witness, an accomplice in my parents’ desires to pass nothing but love and a piano down to their children.

After Ma’s is complete, the lady at the bank, the notary public stamps her name and seal on the documents. Pa is still checking and rechecking his, to make sure. Ma recognizes the last name of the notary- Helb, and recalls the history of her children. As we wait for Pa to read and be sure, Ma remembers that the bank woman had a child that, at the age of 13, had died in a car accident. She is very compassionate, and she asks the bank lady about her children. Mrs. Helb shows my mother and I a picture of her unfinished daughter while David helps Pa figure out his documents.

I watched the tears of Mrs. Helb fall as she served as notary public, thinking about her daughter passed from this earth at a tragic age, and could not help but tear up as as well as we watched my parents sign their lives away. After Pa finished his work, we talked about Mrs. Helb’s younger daughter, and how he knew her from school. She is 12, and she has never been seen by him in his principal’s office. He knows of her, he knows that she is a good student.

He finalizes his living will and Mrs. Helb stamps it, and suddenly we are outside, giving hugs and wishes of new years to each other. Ma declares that she is going to drive home instead of Pa, and David and I get into the caravan to bring me home.

In our trip towards Minneapolis David and I discuss the giants that lay in the earth beneath us, and the pioneers that brought them there. He understands completely everything I am saying, and every word he speaks I take to heart. We speak of the horizons of brain research as if we were talking of the score of the football game. I am still in shock from witnessing the signing of my parent’s will, un-identified. Everything David and I discussed, everywhere we dipped our cups, was wonderful, and for a few days afterward I remained in a child-like reverie of that conversation.

Though I feel lucky to have witnessed what I have described, it has also brought me trouble. To watch Mis. Helb hold the picture of her lost daughter to me, and to see my father and mother sign their living wills was not Saturday entertainment. Perhaps I am not very strong in these matters, and perhaps this occurrence might have been witnessed better by someone else. But though the experience brought me to grief, my respect for death is now more honest. My desire to now share with others in the manner that my parents have, regardless of what I have to share, is refined.

works cited

1: The poem they had discovered, from 2005:

Signatures

Oh Thomas Saunders who are you
but some words I give to others?

silence when we walk to Lunds to buy flour
and mozzarella
I ( who stares at the alley telephone poles and wires connecting them )
havo nothing more to say
and you coolly smoke Camel Lights,
what are you thinking–
I can never tell what others are thinking.

I sign your name almost daily and yet
we are strangers.

2. google “Rumi who speaks words with my mouth” and look at what you get.