They're Off

Well, my parents are off on their dream of a lifetime vacation - an Alaskan cruise. They've had so much stress since my brother died they needed an escape to leave their troubles behind and enjoy themselves. Hopefully they will be able to leave their troubles behind if just for a short time.

My parents have always wanted to be able to leave us kids an inheritance. It's something important to my dad especially. He grew up very poor and his parents died and left them with nothing but bills. He and my mother were the only ones of six children to pay off their portion of the funeral bill. Of course, generally funeral homes don't care who pays what as long as it gets paid. These people however were very generous and refused to take any more money from my parents. They knew they'd likely not see a dime from the other kids but told my parents that as far as they were concerned my parent's bill was paid in full.

Anyway, as I was saying, my folks always wanted to leave an inheritence. For them, this meant that for any money to be left for an inheritance they'd have to do a lot of cautious spending and foregoing some of the finer things. My sister and I (and my brother prior to his death) have always tried to get them to enjoy themselves and not worry about an inheritence. If there was anything left, fine. If not fine. So they've finally decided to take some money and go on this trip. And my sister and I couldn't be happier for them.