Grampa's Bond

A few months ago, I posted a few blogs about Grampa. That spurred me into doing a bit of genealogical research (a bit, I said) on other ancestral lines too. I made some notes at the time but haven't gotten around to doing anything with them except for a brief post about my grandmother's family all being from Kent, England.

At the time, I thought I was done with my memories of grampa, and I suppose that I still am, but one other item has recently come to mind: the $500 bond that he willed to me.

Five hundred dollars was quite a lot of money back in the late fifties. I suppose if cashed, it could have provided either rent or food for about six months and may have purchased one-quarter of a new automobile. I'll leave it up to reader to figure out what sort of equivalent amount that might be in your present situation.

It was a church bond for their building fund, but it came due a year or two later, and Mom thought we should turn it into another bond in our new, little, neighbourhood church. They met in a school, and Mom thought they needed a building and that my inheritance would spur them on — as if! As it turned out, they didn't quite get it but saw it as a gift, so it was goodbye to these funds. I didn't mind that much; I hadn't used it, and I was happy being a kid — so whatever — easy come, easy go. However, my mother, whose brainwave this had been felt an obligation to me and eventually saved $500 to replace what was lost. I think I spent it in our first year of marriage in 1969.

However nice the money was, it was the fact that Grampa remembered me that came to mean a lot to me. No other grandparent did the same, nor did my only uncle of whom I was very fond. Even my father left me no remembrance except to pass his millions (lol) to me if my mother had predeceased him, which she didn't. Although I never carried a huge sense of loss over not being remembered by these people, I was also someone disappointed at being overlooked. It wasn't a windfall that I was looking for, but an acknowledgment of some sort would have been nice.

However, now that I am the one who requires a will, it's easy for me to understand how it works. It's easier to leave it all to the spouse and trust him or her to pass appropriate remembrances along because you really don't know what the financial situation will be when it's your turn to shuffle the mortal coil. Situations change, grandkids are born, and new partnerships formed, and one simply wants to have a will that works for the long haul because they're too pricey to change incessantly.

Nevertheless, I have always been pleased that Grampa found a way to remember me the way that he did.