Writing my will sent me into an existential spiral

This fall, my husband and I worked with a family law attorney to write our wills and advance directives. We attempted this 10 years ago, after our first child was born, but abandoned the project amid sleep deprivation and the overwhelm of new responsibilities. Now that we are the parents of two no-longer-little kids, and more accustomed to the many losses and logistics of adulthood, we decided it was time to see it through.

During a two-hour meeting with our lawyer, he asked questions regarding end-of-life scenarios: if you were to both pass away, who would you choose to raise your children if they are minors? Who do you choose to manage the assets left in trust for the children until they are old enough to manage assets themselves?

While these are standard questions for writing a will, they sent me into an existential spiral. Suddenly, I was considering my past and future. What does it mean to build a life? What do I want to leave behind?

Since 5 November, I’ve been thinking about inheritance as I come to terms with the political reality of the United States.

In my writing career, I’ve argued and advocated for universal healthcare, racial equity in maternal healthcare, paid family leave, living wages for professional domestic workers and wages for housework done for free by mothers. I’ve been saying for years that total bodily autonomy for all people may not be possible in my lifetime, but that it could be possible during my children’s lifetime.

With the re-election of Trump, I am considering the possibility of living much of my life under a conservative political regime that will pass and uphold legislation antithetical to my beliefs: a government opposed to labor protections and environmental regulation; a government based in cruelty, not care.

As our attorney explained some legal maneuvering he would write into our wills to protect our kids’ inheritances from an estate tax, I wanted to say: “Actually, I am fine with taxes! I like the social safety net!”

But I quieted myself with the excuse countless parents use to justify all manner of selfish decisions: I just want what’s best for my children.

I’d hoped we would leave the next generation with a better world, that we could be proud of our virtues and accomplishments. Knowing it won’t happen, as well as acknowledging my own complicity in this, leaves me sad and disappointed. My legacy won’t be noble or simple, but it will be human.

I’m careful about my personal legacy as well. At six, my younger daughter is prone to call herself “dumb”, “stupid”, “ugly” and “useless”. We’ve never once used those words to describe her, but she has absorbed them nonetheless. They pop up when she is having a hard time listening, when she senses that I am upset or frustrated by her.

This, too, is one of her inheritances. I know the tendency to internalize negative feelings. I’ve lived so many years of my life that way, because I was never allowed to fully express sadness and anger and hurt.

I want to change that. So I sit with her and urge her not to go down that path. I say that if she will just let me love her and be with her, she won’t have to tell herself terrible things that simply aren’t true. It works more days than it does not.

“There is no other world. This is the only world we are in,” writes Alexander Chee in On Becoming an American Writer, an essay that wrestles with the point of being a writer in the wake of Trump’s first election. Chee urges us to hold on to our art, our values and what matters to us, amid all the uncertainty: “This revisable country, so difficult to change, so easily changed.”

What I do every day still matters, I tell myself, even when I don’t believe it. I believe my children should be free to be their whole selves, that it’s my job to allow them to do so and to witness them. And I believe that what is best for my children is what is best for everyone, especially the most vulnerable.

More from Angela Garbes’s Halfway there:

• No sex drive and a ‘tanking libido’: how I redefined intimacy in midlife

• First my left knee, then my right: my middle-aged body’s betrayal

• Perimenopause has brought chaos to my life – but also peace

Taped to my other wall is another passage from Chee’s essay, which I wrote out by hand after I read it in 2018.

“Write to your dead ... Let them hold you accountable,” Chee writes. “And when war comes – and make no mistake, it is already here – be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love, and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get here?”

I will show up for my children every day – imperfectly, prone to tears, occasionally unsure what I have to offer. I will get them ready for the world we live in, teach them to pursue pleasure, to take care of themselves and others. My legacy will be modeling and preparing them to work for their freedom, with the hope they will prepare their own people long after I am gone.