No Rest for the Wicked?

I just finished making the reservations. Thursday morning, my wife and I will fly a circuitous route to Sacramento, California, where we will rent a dull car and drive about two hours to Santa Rosa. We'll arrive in Sacramento about 1:30 pm; with luggage, unfamiliarity with highways, and other such intrusions, I imagine we'll be in Santa Rosa by 3:30 or 4:00.

There, we'll visit the house where my mother-in-law lived before she died. We'll go through boxes, look for photos, and shred papers that have no meaning but could be used by criminals to do harm or steal identities that are no more.

We've set aside Friday through Sunday to go through "stuff" and then arrange for shipping any significant amounts of paperwork back home. We'll drive back to Sacramento on Sunday evening and will fly back to Dallas on Monday.

This will be my wife's first trip back since her mother died. There's a battle going on between three siblings and it bothers me. My wife is not inclined to be one who wants her "due," but there is some fighting going on between other siblings and, in the finaly analysis, there is some bad blood there. It makes me sad to see people argue and fight over who "gets" what. It doesn't belong to them. They don't "deserve" it. It's just what's left and there's upset that one sibling took advantage of the mother and got all the value, while the others were left out.

Repeat: it wasn't the children's property to start with...the mother could have, and perhaps should have, used it all up during her lifetime, leaving nothing for the vultures to fight over.

I'm being unkind, and I shouldn't. I didn't grow up in that family. I don't know the history that's never been told. But I think back to when my parents died and there was none of this "I deserve what's mine." We just mourned their passing and disposed of what little was left of their lives, then went on about our own.

Despite the somber reason for going to Santa Rosa, I hope we have a chance to have some fun. A little trip back to the Russian River Pub would be nice...I loved their hot wings and beer and relaxed attitudes when I was there last. My wife started to mention it tonight and I knew before she spoke about it what she was thinking. We've come to know ourselves so incredibly well in some ways. We don't just complete one another's thoughts, we complete one another's wishes.

We haven't told staff we're going, other than a cryptic message that we might be out of the office on personal business on Thursday and Friday.

We'll be gone and I'll feel guilty for enjoying a trip that shouldn't be enjoyed.