Can't help it...pondering mortality...

Well, this has been a strange week. First Farrah Fawcett - expected, but still sad. Michael Jackson, sudden and strange - but not worthy of 2 days of CNN dedicated coverage, in my opinion. Now I pop open CNN and the OxyClean guy has died. Seems like, all of a sudden, folks in the public eye are dropping like flies.

Kind of makes me ponder my own mortality. What would happen if I were to suddenly drop dead? I handle the paying of the bills...I don't even think the wife knows the PIN for our joint bank account. She probably wouldn't understand my filing system, and would have no clue where to find our bills, or when things are due. I have good life insurance, but wouldn't have a clue as to how she would actually get that money...do they call you? I don't know.

Then there are the possible future children. That would be a quagmire of complication for the wife. I'm going to re-do my will once we're pregnant, so that the wife is legally protected there. But still, even with a iron-clad will leaving the children in the care of the wife, moving that through the courts will be time-consuming and possibly expensive. That is assuming that one of my estranged family members doesn't try to complicate matters by throwing a wrench into the legal process. I dearly hope they don't, but I have plenty of friends who will attest to the parental standing of the wife, biology and legality notwithstanding. I think she's locked in for keeping the kids, but that doesn't mean that it won't be a lot of headache.

Also, what would happen with my job? I have all kinds of stuff that I do - that nobody knows about. How would folks figure out what I was working on, and how to find files and such that I've saved if I wasn't there to tell them? And how would the wife let them know? She doesn't even know my boss' last name. I guess she could call the receptionist over there - they could look that up for her. But it would probably help if she already had that number, and didn't have to try and find it.

After going through my mom's long hospitalization, I found out first hand how hard it is to try to get a handle on someone else's life and finances when they can't tell you where to find things. I don't want the wife to have to go through that - at least my mom kept a book of her usernames for all the websites for all her bills (thank goodness for her horrible memory). I just had to crack her passwords, and I'm fairly certain the wife wouldn't know how to do that for me. So at the very least, I'll write up a cheat sheet for the wife on where to find things, how to get into all our various accounts and bills, and what she would need to do in case I didn't come home one day. You guys should think about that too - what is it, in your life with your family, that you do that your spouse doesn't have to worry about (or the other way around)? You and your spouse should write all that down, just in case he/she does find themselves in the tragic position of having to worry about it someday.