PART 11 – I Wanted the Money to Become a Simple Fact, but the Longer I Waited, the More I Realized How Little a Number Could Explain

There was something strange about having such a large number attached to my name.

I could see it on the check.

I could read it without difficulty.

Yet it still felt distant from my ordinary life.

Six million dollars.

I had never planned around a sum like that.

I had never expected to be asked what I would do with it.

I had never thought my grandmother would be the person to put that question in front of me.

And I still couldn't treat the money as available.

The bank had explained the remaining steps.

I understood why they were necessary.

That didn't make waiting pleasant.

I wanted the matter resolved so I could stop wondering whether the check would pass the full review.

But I also knew that a decision from the bank wouldn't settle every question I had.

Even if the transaction proceeded, I would still need to understand what Grandma had intended.

I had begun to see that I was hoping one answer would solve two separate problems.

The first was practical.

Could the bank complete the transaction?

The second was personal.

Why had Grandma written the check?

I couldn't use the answer to one question as proof of the answer to the other.

The check might be valid without my understanding the reason behind it.

That was an obvious statement.

It took me longer than it should have to accept it.

I kept imagining what I would say if someone asked whether I believed the money was really mine.

I would have to explain that the initial findings were encouraging, but the bank still needed to complete its procedures.

I couldn't honestly promise anything beyond that.

The answer would sound cautious.

It would also be accurate.

I had to learn to accept that accuracy was more important than sounding certain.

The same applied to my thoughts about Grandma.

I could say that she had written the check.

I could say that the bank had found the initial details consistent with a valid transaction.

I could say that several relatives had also received checks.

I couldn't say why.

I couldn't say what she expected us to do.

And I couldn't say what the decision revealed about her beyond the fact that she had chosen to make it.

I wanted to know more.

That desire wasn't wrong.

What would have been wrong was pretending that wanting an explanation gave me the right to invent one.

I thought about how often people did that.

Someone made a decision, and everyone around them began supplying motives.

A gift became a statement.

A silence became a refusal.

A delay became a sign of distrust.

Sometimes those interpretations were correct.

Sometimes they weren't.

Without evidence, it was impossible to know.

I had spent years teaching students to examine the difference between a character's actions and a reader's interpretation of those actions.

Now I was learning the same lesson in a far less comfortable setting.

My grandmother's check was an action.

Its meaning remained uncertain.

I couldn't erase that uncertainty by deciding what I wanted the action to mean.

I also couldn't ignore the practical responsibility attached to a transaction of that size.

The bank had to complete its work.

I had to wait.

The other family members had their own checks and their own circumstances.

I couldn't assume that everyone would respond in the same way.

I couldn't even assume that the check meant the same thing to each recipient.

The amount on mine was clear.

The personal significance was not.

I found that distinction difficult, but I was beginning to understand it.

Money could be counted.

A signature could be compared.

An account could be examined.

Intentions were harder.

I didn't want to turn my grandmother into a mystery simply because I couldn't explain her decision.

She was still the person I knew.

The check had changed my understanding of what I knew about her, but it hadn't erased the relationship we had.

I needed to leave room for both truths.

I knew her.

I didn't know everything.

And I had to be honest about the difference.

Click here to continue reading: PART 12: I Stopped Looking at the Check as an Answer and Began Seeing It for What It Was: One Fact in a Situation I Didn’t Yet Understand