Gratitude

 
I've been looking into preparing a last will and testament, preparing funerary instructions, and preparing a living will. I've also been debating whether any one of my friends deserves, despite the offer of assistance, the task of acting as executor.

I'm not fond of letting the state carry out my wishes. They can't secure my airports, deport illegal visitors, host a G8/G20 without a riot, or understand citizens should be more important to them than lobbyist dollars. Why would I trust them to carry out my final instructions?

Equally, some of my instructions are fairly particular. I don't think anyone not conversant with my hobby activities could successfully see to the disposition of some of the goods without a "Subject Matter Expert (Games)".

And I don't know much about how Trusts are or can be created here in Canada. If planning a wedding can take a year and involves two people, I figure planning my departure thus probably will take six months to get all the ducks in a line. Hopefully its not half as expensive as the average wedding or I'll end up owing someone just for the priviledge of shuffling off this mortal coil.

I'm not really in a rush to do that nor am I really expecting it. But I live a moderate risk lifestyle and life has a sense of humour one could best call 'actively macabre'. So I figure I could go anytime. Heck, by my early life accounting, I've been living on borrowed time for at least 5-10 years. I always figured I'd *be* one of those statistics you read about, the ones where you said "He was so young..." or "He was too good to come to such an end...".

As it turns out, I'm getting old and we know what Billy Joel said about who it is that dies young (hint: old folks don't get to stay good).

All that is bureaucratic and involved. But you know, the process involved has driven my mind to further shores. It seems to touch on matters of what you'd like to leave to who, final messages to each, what you'd like your headstone (if you have one) to say, any sort of memorial donations you'd like to make, the method of your 'preparation/disposal', and so on.

And that's the good part; When I found myself thinking about my friends (Dear Lord, the notification list for my passing will be long....), I once again reaffirmed my conviction that my life has been rather splendid.

Being born in Canada has certainly helped. It's like winning the lottery as far as places to be born and live to be born here. Can't fault my luck there none.

And parents? Got great ones - tough, pragmatic, compassionate, enduring, and unafraid to speak their minds (And how! Oi vey!). Can't find faults that matter with either of them and got a good deal from them as far as a start in life goes.

Then come the friends. I think of them as a great, big extended family. I've got so many good friends I can depend on, I can confide in, I can talk to, I can game with or otherwise have fun with, and whose lives I am genuinely interested in and whose fates I care greatly about. By this accounting, I have truly been a wealthy man in the only really important sense of wealth in this life.

And then there is my Godson. That's a blessing the like of which any man is lucky to have. He's the closest thing I have or may have to my own young one. That's a gift so precious I can't really find words to do it justice.

I've been debating what words I might like on my headstone. I think that's going to take some thinking. So many good quotes, so many parting lines....

Maybe I should just stick with "Blessed with the best friends a man could ask for."