Signing Our Wills Before Moving Overseas During a Global Pandemic

We said goodbye to the babysitter, pulled the door shut, and walked to the car together. The air felt light, the October sun warm. Downtown, we ordered a plate of corn tacos. We plopped Pico on steaming plates, poured water, took off our masks, fumbling into this rare moment. Just the two of us. Eating tacos. Downtown. I think we’re on a date. A pandemic date. I say. A date is a date even if it’s signing your life on a dotted line.

We stepped into the gleaming elevator and I leaned into him as we rode to the seventh floor. He’ll be right out, the receptionist tells us. He has a mullet, I smile to myself as I walk towards the windows facing the Capitol. There are people without homes camped down below, outside a Presbyterian church. We can hear sirens nearby as the city prepares for the vice presidential debate.

We do the awkward elbow bump with the lawyer and then sit around an oversized conference table. Do they really ever need this many seats for a meeting? Not these days. He pulls out stacks of neat papers and a flow chart, kindly reminding us what will happen when we die.

He points his ballpoint pen from one circle (me) then down and then to another circle (my husband) and then down. The circles sit opposite each other, suspended accept for a grey dotted line tethering them to assets, guardians, agents. From across the table, the shapes on the paper make a solar system. Shaded planetary bodies orbiting tiny text, spindles of dashes jutting out into far reaches of white space.

We nod our heads separately, then look at each other, checking, then nod again. We sign one line. A few pages in we note the date, and circle what we want done if we are almost, but not quite, dead. We’re asked if we need more time to think about it. I kind of laugh because time won’t tell me what might happen, or how I’ll feel if and when it does. The sound is strange in the quiet room. This is surreal. A stranger, actively discussing the end of our lives, and us, pretending to know, that it’s possible to know, what that will feel like. All of this, a few weeks before moving halfway across the world during a global pandemic. Everything is fine? Everything is fine. Check your emotion and just sign here.

Two witnesses enter, the lawyer recites some kind of legal speak and spell, and the four of us scratch our names onto another line.

That’s it. It’s done, the lawyer says. We cheerily thank him, wave goodbye like old friends, and leave the room. Mullet Receptionist validates our parking ticket. We step back in the elevator, this time going down seven floors. My stomach drops a little — it always does on the way down.