The woman was quite elderly. She walked with difficulty, kind of a side to side tilt as though lifting each foot took concentration. Overall, she did not look well. I had never seen her before at the outreach center. Still, she asked me advice. Not so much asked me, as told me what she planned to do.
Did she have no one else to confide in? I think about that these years later, for I had the conversation with her thirty years ago. I know she is long dead, gone from this world. That's why I think about her sometimes. She wanted to buy peace with her anticipated death. She wanted to buy life insurance.
Many of us have probably received flyers in the mail or heard a pitch on TV about how anyone can buy life insurance, no questions asked. That's what she was thinking about, one of those policies.
"I want to buy it for my grandson," she explained.
I know those policies have a really high monthly premium in proportion to payout. They have to, because they accept people who otherwise wouldn't qualify for insurance. So I gave that elderly lady some good advice.
"You be better off opening an account and putting that money away for him," I confidently suggested.
What a fool I was. That woman wasn't looking to make a good investment. She was looking for peace of mind. That policy premium was a small price to pay for such comfort. I didn't know that then, but I do now.
So much we do in our lives is not a good investment. Having dinner out in a restaurant isn't really a good investment. We can eat for so much less at home. But going out gives us pleasure. We are buying the good feeling that eating out gives us (actually, I personally don't like to eat out).
When we go on vacation, we are trying to buy happiness. Vacation expenditures--a lot of money we will never get back. We come home with nothing except photos, memories and sometimes a bad cold, or a sunburn. Despite this lack of material value, we feel we have spent our money well.
What the woman wanted to buy was a good feeling. Peace. Comfort. A place to rest her thoughts as she went to sleep at night. What is that worth?
Haven't I had those thoughts? Every time I flew on an airplane I bought flight insurance, as much as they would sell me. I hated to fly and was terrified every time the plane shuddered.
Now flight insurance is a bad investment, as bad as the one the woman wanted to make as she contemplated taking out a policy. I knew that when I bought insurance that is wasn't a good investment, but it made me feel good whenever we hit turbulence.
"At least my kids will be rich," I used to think. The idea of going down with the plane was so much more tolerable with that thought. The flight insurance premium was a down payment on comfort. That comfort was worth more than what I paid. Thinking my kids would be rich if my plane went down made what I perceived to be danger, tolerable.
I don't think my elderly lady had long to live. Maybe a couple of years. How much could she save, realistically, putting that premium away? Even if she lived longer than a couple of years, what were all those days worth, worrying about her grandson, thinking about his future.
She wanted to do something grand. She wanted to make a difference in her grandson's life. To make a gesture, to show him how much he was loved. What did she have to give? She had her life, and a life insurance premium.
There is that saying, nothing is certain but taxes and death. She figured, she'd put her money down on the one thing in life that was certain. She was going to die. Buying a life insurance policy, even a bad one that did not have good return on premium, would give her the chance to make that inevitable event more tolerable. Even profitable.
It's really a small price to pay, when I think about it. She could imagine her grandson receiving the windfall. She could imagine how good he would feel, how the money might help him. And then she could imagine that he would remember her, remember how she loved him. She could reach from the grave and say something she probably said a thousand times, a million times in his life, "I love you."
I hope the elderly lady ignored my foolish advice. I hope she followed her heart. I like to think she did, that she bought the policy. That she had those moments of peace, thinking about how the money would help her grandson. I hope he cashed in the policy and saw love in that payout. Those moments...her peace and his memories...I think they would have been worth the premium.
***The pictures are of my own granddaughter, a long time ago.
Thank you for reading my blog. Health and peace to all. Hive on!
Wes & Grindan
