Blood Is Thicker Than Water

So, I was working through the mountains of mail that I have a bad habit of collecting on my coffee table - it's funny, because I used to love going through the mail; now it's just one of the things that annoy me, probably because I don't devote any attention to it until it's this big paper monster in the middle of my living room. I had some friends over on the weekend, so I grabbed up all of the mail in my arms and dumped it on the floor of my home office; forcing myself to step over it when I wanted to sit at my laptop and do a bit of work.

I remembered there were a few important papers in the pile; one having to do with my prescription coverage, a few bills I needed to pay, some student loan paperwork - and I come across this envelope from an address I don't recognize. Typically, these are cleverly disguised advertisements for something - upgrading my air conditioning unit, offers for group life insurance (which I think is incredibly funny, considering that I AM a life insurance agent), or other miscellaneous products and services. I open the envelope.

Damn envelope gave me a paper cut. Curses. I take a closer look, and I realize - it's a letter from an attorney's office. I am no stranger to attorneys. As a member of the financial services industry, attorneys are an integral part of my profession - I frequently refer my clients to attorneys for their estate planning. But this isn't business... it's personal. At the top of the letter, I see the Bunny's name.

In order to tell you the rest of this story, I need to tell you another story first. That last day - the day the Bunny went for his bike ride and had the accident - he was riding with a group of his motorcycle buddies. One of these guys was a very good friend of his; someone the Bunny had worked with for almost twenty years on the job. For anonymity purposes, I'll call him... Dave. So, the Bunny and Dave were very good friends. Dave was also married with a family; he was about the same age as my husband, and Dave and his wife were already grandparents. At the time I worked at the company, I also worked with and knew Dave. Over the course of mine and the Bunny's relationship, we interacted socially with Dave and his family - attending family barbeques, birthday celebrations and the like from time to time.

Dave and the Bunny were riding tandem (i.e. side by side) down the hill that night. The circumstances of the accident were never fully explained - it was hard to know what actually transpired without any eyewitnesses - but what I know is that for some unknown reason, as they were coming down the hill the Bunny swerved to the right and went off the road. The authorities who investigated the accident supposed - based on the skid marks on the pavement - that Dave, in seeing the Bunny go off the road, purposely laid his motorcycle down in the street in an effort to come to my husband's aid. In doing this, another vehicle crested the hill and ran Dave over. He died at the scene.

That night - before I got the call from the hospital - I was getting phone calls from Dave's wife (she was starting to freak out, where I was like "don't worry, I'm sure they will be pulling up any minute"). I would not call us true "friends" in my normal sense of the word, but I believed were were "friends by default" - our husbands were good friends, and so we interacted socially because of that relationship. We were certainly different types of people, she and I; but I didn't mind spending time with her, however infrequently that happened. When Dave was killed and the Bunny was in ICU, I tried to be as much of a comfort to her as I could, considering I could relate to what she was going through. It made me feel good about Dave to think that his last act on earth was to try to help his friend - my husband - even above considering his own safety. It was... noble. Dave was a good guy. So was the Bunny. They were just two decent, good guys that shouldn't have died "by accident." It just seems so unfair.

As far as family planning - the kind of thing I help my clients with (the "unexpected death" and how will the survivors survive thing) - our family and Dave's family were diametrically opposite. At each end of the spectrum, the Bunny and I had our life insurance in place, our wills, trusts, durable powers of attorney - it was important for me to get all of that stuff taken care of. The Bunny cooperated because it made me happy. I did it partly becuase it was the responsible thing to do - especially as a life insurance agent; I mean, how could I sit there and counsel my clients on the importance of planning if I didn't even have my own planning done? - but also because I wanted my family to be taken care of when I died. I fully expected I would be the one to go first. I mean, I'm the sick one! The Bunny was the healthy one: going to the gym all of the time, worried about eating the right foods, being too overweight...

But back to my story-before-the-story. So, where we were all planned out - Dave's family was not. Dave's wife was a stay-at-home spouse, taking care of children and household - Dave was the primary (sole) breadwinner. When he died, Dave's wife didn't have very good prospects for ongoing income. Which might not be a concern in the short-term... but in the long run, yeah, it was going to cause problems.

Shortly after the Bunny died, I received a letter from an insurance company. The letter was notifying me that "someone was suing my husband's estate" - three guesses on who THAT someone turned out to be! I was outraged, and horrified, and shocked - the actual suit wasn't based on anything concrete - but it doesn't have to be. Rather than waste a lot of resources fighting it, the insurance company decided it was in their best interests to settle.

Dave's wife never called me - to tell me that she had no other choice, or that she felt really bad, or to apologize and assure me that she wasn't really trying to malign my husband's memory - that the suit was just a means to an end. But that's how I took it: that she would reduce our husbands' decades-long relationship to nothing more than a dollar amount, and in the process imply that my husband - Dave's good friend and colleague - would have in any way been responsible for Dave's death.

So back to today's letter. The attorney was notifying me that the insurance company had finally paid the settlement to Dave's wife and the case was officially closed. I threw the letter on the top of my desk, to be filed with the rest of the Bunny's paperwork (the pile on the desk isn't high enough for me to be forced to deal with it yet).

I had to let it go. The anger, the feelings of betrayal, and - unfortunately for Dave's wife - my relationship with her. The good news is, we weren't true friends to begin with. I would like to think that if she HAD been a true friend, she wouldn't have done it no matter what the circumstances. Last I heard about her, she was struggling to come to terms with everything... again, we are diametrically opposite. And even with a blood money payout... I guess between the both of us, I came out ahead after all.