Is there any more dispiriting a conversation than the one with your financial planner? My husband made me take part in this year's conversation because he wants to retire. And I want him not to retire. First, he showed me a graph of our financial future. Three lines that took in the vicissitudes of the market, the vagaries of the world situation, and for all I know, cricket futures (what an article in the New Yorker dubbed, "the other green meat"). It was not encouraging. Two lines dribbled along with all the enthusiasm of a sulking dog. The other dropped off the page after a few inches. This I gathered was what happened if the fates did not align. When checking the options from his pension policy, my husband asked me, in all seriousness, which of us would die first.
One would think, with all my ailments and emergency surgeries, I would be the first one to go. Not so. My healthy husband was built like the one horse shay, each piece as strong as the next, never breaking down until one day it "went to pieces all at once, and nothing first, — just as bubbles do when they burst."
Actually, it's a race to the finish to see which of us can leave the other holding the bag. Ah, love....
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