This week’s essay will be a little more emotional than usual. That is because I recently attended the funerals of two friends. I’ll refer to them as John and Jane, although some of you will know who they really are.
John was my age, and I met him in the late ‘80s. His two children were the same age as my two oldest kids; I coached his son in Little League and he was a den leader to my son in Cub Scouts. I asked him one time if he had any objection to discussing his life insurance program with me and he replied “Too late. I recently purchased term insurance.”
Now those of you who know me know I have nothing against term insurance, and in fact recommend it often. I do however, have a problem using it as it was not designed to be used, i.e., to solve long term or indeterminate term needs. So when I pressed John about it, he said he didn’t believe in whole life (I wasn’t aware it was a religion) and I dropped the matter.
Fast forward to 2010, and John was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer of the blood cells. Though he fought valiantly for a few years, he ultimately lost the battle.
Jane was the sister of a good friend of mine from high school, and was a friend in her own right. She moved to New England in the ‘70s, so I only saw her sporadically since then. She married, had three children, divorced, and raised her three boys with very little help from her ex.
Needless to say, I was shocked when I received the phone call informing me that she had died in a car accident. At her funeral, I couldn’t help thinking that her boys, now 24, 22, and 19, who grew up basically without a father, now face life without a mother.
I don’t know if John or Jane had life insurance when they died, but that’s not the point. The point is that death can come to any of us unexpectedly. If you didn’t wake up tomorrow, or if you were diagnosed with a grave disease today, how would your loved ones fare?
There are many problems and issues that death creates, but one of them is very easily avoidable – the financial issue. Although no amount of life insurance can ease the emotional pain of loss that the death of a loved one creates, it can ensure that finances won’t be a problem.
Intellectually, we all know we are going to die, but very few of us think about it from an emotional perspective. And yet that is exactly the perspective we need to make sure our loved ones are taken care of.
We make choices every day, and each choice has an end result. We can make the choice to put our affairs in order, or we can choose to not think about it. But the choice is ours.