Sometimes in my adventures I am privy to a situation where someone has passed away and the surviving relatives encircle the estate of the deceased like ravenous buzzards. Right away, sister fights sister, brother battles brother, cousin assaults cousin. Each tries to outsmart the others to get the biggest piece of the pie, or indeed, escape with the whole thing, pan and all.
Mmm. Pie… I love pie. It’s difficult for me to name my favorite. There’s the good old American stand-by and everyone’s lover, apple pie. Blueberry pie is also in my top five, but when Thanksgiving nears, I find myself daydreaming and smiling like a moron over pumpkin pie. So let’s say–for the sake of this argument–that pumpkin pie is the greatest, richest, most upper class pie in the world. It has it all: money, jewels, fine art, a trophy wife, and prime real estate.
Moving down the ladder, let’s classify apple pie as middle class. Apple has a good life: it can pay its bills, support a family, take the occasional vacation, and has moderate property and possessions. Apple is by no means rich like pumpkin, but it is comfortable. Apple pie is numerous; it is the backbone of piedom.
This leaves rhubarb pie sulking on the bottom rung. I hate rhubarb. It’s sour. It’s nasty. And it doesn’t wash. It comes home drunk every night and sells its food stamps for cigarettes and Busch Beer. Rhubarb has nothing and will die with nothing. Rhubarb is the lower class of pie and can’t even pronounce proletariat.
So, after that long metaphor, here’s my point. When people die, they leave behind pies. For every one hundred pies, perhaps ten are pumpkin, maybe twenty are rhubarb, and the remaining seventy are apple. All these pies, no matter the class, must be served to the surviving relatives, lest they spoil.
Those who wait for their piece of pumpkin are generally civilized. There are exceptions, but most of the time, the people receiving a slice of the pumpkin have grown up to bake their own pumpkin pie, and so when an auction company like mine comes to dessert and begins selling and slicing, there is no great anxiety and there is no angst afterward when everyone is enjoying coffee. Because pumpkin pie is so filling, one equal slice is usually enough to satisfy most appetites.
When it comes to rhubarb, no one cares either. It sucks. No one liked it before the baker died, and no one wants it after he’s gone and buried. No one fights over the rhubarb pie, because no auctioneer can find anyone who wants a slice. So the rhubarb pie usually lies unclaimed, eventually molds, and is taken to the landfill by the slum lord or trailer park owner.
This leaves apple, the most contended pie of the three. Where rhubarb is spurned and pumpkin is filling, apple pie can leave the receivers wanting more. The surviving relatives had a taste of the apple while the baker was alive. Now he’s gone and they want a bigger piece than the rest or–as I said before–they want the whole pie. Each family member feels he or she deserves more, for each claims a greater stake in helping form and cook the pie. Others are just gluttons and roam from elder to elder, trying to acquire as many pies as possible. Some are just spiteful, wishing to possess most or all of the apple pie, even if they leave it to rot on the table. Locks get changed, court dates get set, and all hell breaks loose.
The fact is that the majority of estates have $10,000 or less (sometimes far less) worth of chattel property within them. Garbage is garbage, so I don’t even deal with it. When it comes to those richer estates where there is indeed great stuff within the walls, I sell it, hand the family a fat check, and they say, “Thank you.” It’s those homes that contain every day, middle-of-the-road items where I find the greatest potential for executors pulling their hair out over jealous and greedy relatives. It’s in those apple pie estates that I find the greatest possibility for heartaches, headaches, and ass aches.
And I’m exhausted. I’m sick to death of seeing brothers and sisters kill each other over so very little. I get tired of seeing the ugly side of people. It’s so stupid to fight for a few thousand dollars. It’s so stupid for family members to hate each other over mediocrity. Hiding behind feigned sentiment and over-exaggerated grief, it becomes a pageant of fools. For as Shakespeare explained in Macbeth, “[Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
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that’s a very powerful reminder, john, that you never know what will happen when money and emotions get the better of judgement.
when my mother died, she left behind some rhubarb pie. of course, i loved her rhubard pie while she was alive, and she gave me some special gifts i will always treasure.
but when she passed, i was glad to let my brothers and sisters fight over the remaining pie.
what surprised me was they really didn’t fight at all.
your observations are right on.
Treasure the things that mean something to you, that make you smile. That’s a great thing. What gets me is when people fight over the stuff out greed and spite.
John,
You have hit the nail right on the head with this post. I don’t know if you could have smacked it an closer to the center of the hammer either. Life is way to short to fight over a couple pieces of Apple pie!
Thanks, Rob. I’m sure you’ve run into the same type of situations.
There is nothing better than watching family members fight over Mom’s “rare” coin collection that consists of a few books of Indian Head and Wheat Pennies and of course those “very rare” “real silver ” Kennedy Half-Dollars. Seeing siblings scream over who is going to get Pop’s “priceless—absolute mint” baseball card collection that is 90% commons and far from being mint. Sister to sister combat over the “heirloom” quilt that was “handed down through the generations” that was actually won by Grandma at a church raffle in 1952. And lest we forget the “irreplaceable” family console stereo at which the family sat around listening to Mitch Miller’s Christmas Sing-A-Long LP and the latest platter from Bobby Vinton. Heck–there’s even a fight over those rare Elvis albums–”you know they don’t make records anymore and Elvis is big you know!” It always amazes me that loved ones will fight each other over stuff that they had long forgotten about or never cared for in the first place. It makes you wonder if they felt the same way about their dearly departed.
John,
I love your posts and am amazed at how such a local industry as auctions is universal as well.
I will say that pumpkin pies are new money and it’s the pecan pies that have the old money. Pecan is talking to it’s lawyer’s right now to see if there is a defamation suit possible. Just saying you better keep your lawyer on speed dial!
Jason
Ha! Let Pecan bring it on. I won’t be intimidated.
your comments about spite are interesting. there is a “new” classification of mental illness called “bitterness syndrome” that is being talked about in academic/scientific circles. it’s where somebody loses something (a death, money or a house, for example) and they become bitter to the point it overwhelms all else in their life (including reason, family, any other chance at happiness).
talk about sour rhubarb pie…
Spite is not a mental illness. It’s human nature. If we’re going to classify spite as a disease, then human nature must also be a disease.
As the famous Professor Wagstaff once proclaimed-”Tomorrow we start tearing down the college”.
I say make it colleges! Forget about bitterness it’s academics that are the real disease!
I would believe a crop circle before an academic circle!
Five points to anyone who knows what actor played “Professor Wagstaff.”
I’m always amazed at the way you clothe a subject in order to better expose it.
That may be the coolest perspective on my work ever.
Great post, John I am glad I followed your link from Seraphine’s site. Peace
Thanks. Hope you’ll come back.
there are so many kinds of humans, there really should be sub-specie and alternate specie types.
for a certain specie of human, spite indeed is a disease.
hopefully, one day with genetic engineering…
my god am i living your words. i felt as if i have been traveling alone for months, no years. thank you.
And the answer, for five points, is : Groucho Marx. I suppose, with my five points and a buck, I could get a coffee at the gallery, heyna?
Correct. For an extra five points, name the movie.
And I don’t know about that coffee…