The Ten-Year Plan

Late afternoon, mid-week, in the period our progeny has taken to calling The Pandemic Times. Kel and I are at home, perched on stools at the island in the kitchen on a video call with a Trust and Estate lawyer. Highly recommended, Kenzie Woods initially appears on screen looking disconcertingly young. I don’t know what I was expecting. Who am I kidding. I was imagining Diane Lockhart, the elder legal eagle from The Good Wife. Kenzie looks less like Lockhart and more like she may have to truncate this meeting to run off to cheerleading practice.

Initial inane impressions aside, she’s admirably engaging and professionally to-the-point. We’re whipping through the exercise like Secretariat thundering down the stretch of the Belmont Stakes all those misty years ago. Not intimating that Kenzie is in a hurry, just that she has giddy-up to go along with her obvious smarts and a sense of humor, all of which is making the dreaded process tolerable. We’re dealing with subject matter that cries out for humor. Several times over the course of the conversation we’ve been driven to reference This Is Spinal Tap, the mockumentary about a moribund metal band – specifically, the scene where band members are standing over Elvis Presley’s grave at Graceland. One bandmember observes that the setting “really puts perspective on things,” which sets up another to deadpan: “Too much fucking perspective.”

Face it: It’s never pleasant dealing with death. Especially not, symbolically enough, in the dying light of afternoon, in the dead of winter, at a grave juncture in a global pandemic. Especially when the death being discussed is your wife’s, and your own.

We’ve answered all the obvious questions. Executors. Probate. Prostate. Power of Attorney, Flower of the Gurney, Shower of the Wormy…

“Wow, you okay?” Kel whispers, ducking off camera. “You’re muttering.”

“Sorry,” I whisper back. “I completely zoned out there…”

Way too much fucking perspective…

“You could use another coffee…”

“I could use a cocktail…”

Suffice to say, this ain’t our first time at this rodeo. We made out wills eons ago. Before electricity, by candlelight, on parchment, with the inked edge of swan quill. This was back when we were pups and the process was far less convoluted by age (and with it, urgency), adult children, and assorted tangled business considerations (yeah, we’re regular Rockefellers), ensuring that even if we were at once caught and crushed in the gears of a combine, both offspring and empire would be in good hands… Or, minimally, our decisions would not cause anyone any undo gastrointestinal upheaval or gluteal pain. Years later we revisited the documents, depressing ourselves half-to-death all over again as we updated our personal and professional status. But this, this is different. This round was recommended by our financial guru who gently goaded: “It’s what responsible people your age do, particularly in a pandemic. Update your will and get everything in order.” And we’re nothing if not our age, and responsible.

We swear to ourselves that this round is it: literally to be Our Last Will and Testament. Final kick at the can. The last waltz. All etched in stone. Ah, unless we waffle and change our minds on some niggling detail. No, seriously. Damn it. This… is… it…

“Okay,” Kenzie says, “we’re almost at the finish line.” Do I sense she’s rushing at this point? Possibly hankering to get out the door for a clandestine meeting behind the bleachers with the captain of the football team? Kel will later contend that Kenzie Woods simply looks her age: late-twenties, early-thirties, is her best guess. However, she’ll note, science suggests that at a certain point in time to people of a certain age, everyone begins to look like a kid. Even people who have kids.

“Any questions? Anything you wish to add?” She says that there are things that people typically like to have documented in their wills so that upon death there’s no room for any confusion or conflict amongst those who remain on the sunny side of the sod. And so that if we have wishes, those wishes are met.

Such as?

“Buried? Cremated?”

“Cremated,” we respond emphatically, in unison. Songbirds harmonizing. My wife can’t be buried. She has an aversion to worms. And I’m crazy claustrophobic. Which is not to suggest that either of us relishes the thought of being torched.

“Cremation it is,” she jots in her notes. “And where do you want your ashes to lie or be scattered? Final resting place?”

Imprudently and oddly enough we’ve never given it a thought. We sit in ponderous silence. Kenzie tinkers with her monitor, possibly thinking her screen has frozen. It hasn’t. We have.

“Where are your hearts?” she finally asks.

“In our chests,” I reply.

“Well,” Kel acknowledges, “someone had to say it.”

“No,” Kenzie titters. “You know, the old ‘home is where the heart is’… What’s your place, your… happy place? That’s where your ashes should rest.”

We were born and raised in Woodstock, Ontario, the Dairy Capital of Canada. We met in high school. Butterflies in the stomach, hearts aflutter, two kids locking eyes across a crowded grade ten science class. You could say, and you wouldn’t be wrong: we had chemistry together. And while we maintain both familial and friendship ties to Cowtown, those knots have frayed and loosened over time. We left Woodstock a long time ago for bright lights, big city, to kick-start careers in Toronto: Kel springboarding post Western University and Humber College into a career in public relations; and me, after gigs as a reporter for assorted small-town Thomson newspapers, landing in the sports department of The Globe & Mail. We lived in Bloor West Village, in various apartments including the basement digs of an eccentric university sociology professor, and a high-rise that offered a postcard-perfect view of High Park in all its leafy glory. All in all, five unforgettable years of metropolitan excitement and big-city cool. It was, however, an incongruous existence. While intrigued with the city’s energy and all T.O. had to offer, we were never wholly in-sync with the day-to-day life, the pace, the crowds, the rush ‘n crush. Sorry Toronto, it wasn’t you, it was us.

Upon the arrival of Matthew James, our first of three babies -- Scott Andrew and Haley Christian to follow -- we began to crave space. Bigger abode, a backyard, things we could certainly dream about but never afford in The Big Smoke. After considerable contemplation and exhausting recon missions (with Infant on Board!) into outlying communities, we moved to Oakville where we proceeded to take baby steps. A semi-detached starter home… To a larger detached home…To what was a perfect house for us, in a vibrant neighborhood in the charming city that, quaintly enough, still called itself a town. All in all, sixteen years that were very, very good to us. Years we hold near and dear.

“You know,” I say, “there was a time when I was certain that my final resting place would be Oakville. In fact, one day I specifically told Kel that I’d happily live out my years in that perfect house, in that neighborhood, in that town. The very next day -- I swear, the very next day -- she said something about possibly wanting to move. To a country property, no less. Day after that, she introduced me to Linnie Hopkins, our new realtor.”

“Hmmm, so, if not Oakville, then where?”

It certainly didn’t happen overnight. It took time for a connection to form and eventually cohere. Even longer for me to fully comprehend that country life – the house we fell in love with at first sight (monster mortgage be damned); the initially daunting twenty-three acres under our stewardship; and the village where we’ve now lived for twenty years – had snuck up on me and handcuffed my heart. I went from feeling like I had an incurable case of Imposter Syndrome -- like a fish out of water, a big old phony, a big old fraud -- to feeling like, this is where I belong. Unwittingly, I guess I did the old ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’ Moffat became our happy place. Our home.

“My heart is here.” I glance over at Kel, my partner in country crime. “Moffat is our ‘Mull of Kintyre,’ bagpipes and all…”

“I don’t know what the heck that means, but yeah, Moffat it is. Listen, Kenzie, thanks. I’ve got to dash and jump on another call.” Since the petrifying, paralyzing onset of The Pandemic Times, it’s been remote work, and a ceaseless parade of calls. Jumping on. Jumping off. Keeping her communications company afloat – surprisingly, thriving – throughout COVID’s extended reign of uncertainty.

Kenzie promises to have a draft of our wills over to us the following week. She says a quick goodbye, then disappears into the ether, off to pilot others through the process. Kel heads to her office-in-home to take her work call. I bundle up and Phoebe – cued and never to be left behind -- comes running. We venture out to walk the path we’ve carved through the forested back-acreage. Once classified by a breeder, a little too succinctly, as ‘brindle, Boxer, bitch’, Phoebe follows her nose, captivated by the scent of deer, turkeys, coyotes (wannabe wolves, as we’ve come to call them), and other wildlife, occasionally taking a run at cackling, low-flying birds. Phoebe hates birds. And seemingly loves to entertain me. Pandemic, winter and wills aside, it’s a good day. I’ve got powdery snow underfoot, icy air in my lungs, and Paul McCartney’s emotional love letter to his farm in Scotland playing on repeat in my head. Bagpipes skirling, an earworm if ever there was one.

Twenty years of country living, two decades of country life.

I consider the dichotomy of time: that on one hand the years have passed in the blink of an eye, while on the other it often feels like we’ve been here forever. Through good times, bad times. Twenty years of light, love, levity and, honestly, luck. Good luck, bad luck. Incidents and accidents, pestilence, plague, floods, and more infernal infestations than I care to recall. Twenty years, thousands of things, a million moments. The whole made memorable by the sum of all these moving parts.

Twenty years. Lost marbles, found loves. Oh yeah, it’s been a ride.

We’re long-time yoga practitioners, inveterate meditators. We do our best to anchor ourselves and live in the moment. And yet, we have a ten-year plan. Mind you, we’ve had a ten-year plan for the past ten years. It involves us not sticking our heads in the sand. Keeping eyes wide open to the fact that one day this ride will have to end. Kids grown and gone, the house will be more than we need, and the acreage will be more than we can handle. We’ll downsize. Simply sell and ride off into the sunset. Tellingly, each year we push the ten-year plan off one more year.

“Simply sell?” Dougie, a friend of ours, scoffs. “No simply about it, AJ. When you purchased in Moffat you didn’t just buy an awesome property and a beautiful home, you bought into a lifestyle. From getting out every morning at the crack of dawn to tend to the horses, to spending gads of time maintaining the acreage, to (he chortles) trudging out to rescue the chickens in a snowstorm. Stuff you never though you would be doing, or even could be doing. I remember when you bought the property. You didn’t have a ton of confidence in your ability to take care of it and, to say the least, you had to learn a lot on the fly. Now, you’ve been living this life for two decades.

“When most people downsize it’s just a matter of moving to a smaller home and continuing to live life pretty much exactly as they have been. When you and Kel sell, it will be a matter of moving to a smaller home, an infinitely smaller property, and adjusting to an entirely new lifestyle. My friend, it’s going to be harder than you think to one day just up and move on… Thing is,” he questions, “are you really moving on? Ten years ago, you told me about your supposed ten-year plan. So, are you selling and moving this year or are the goalposts about to shift once again?”

He’s a wonderful guy. One of our nearest dearest friends in the world. But I don’t think Dougie really gets the concept of a ten-year plan.

“No, Numb-Numb, we’re selling, moving and what have you in ten years. Hence the name of the plan.”

Simple plan. Weird that so many people just don’t get it. Me and Kel, we get it. Country home with acreage. Country life.

It’s hard to hang on, and impossible to let go.