Spent

I have a confession to make. I have been spending money as part of my grieving process. I have not really been in touch too much with how my grief is affecting me, I just know it's there. My husband had a big epiphany concerning his, followed by a total release from some significant baggage, and more power to him. Me, I just find myself crying occasionally and saying, oh, I bet grief has something to do with this.

And I'm spending.

That's probably not an uncommon outlet for grief. And I don't spend wildly and extravagantly. I also don't really spend all that much on myself, although there probably is some of that. I just keep coming up with things that it seems good for someone to have, and I go ahead and do it. Especially the kids.  And especially my daughter.

I get excited over something that the boys would like and I add it to their Christmas list.  I see something I know that my little girl will love when she's older, because I loved (or would have) the same thing, so I set it aside for her. I decide the boys would love these science and math videos from Sonlight, so I get them. They do, by the way. And I packaged it in such a way that it feels to Parker like it's part of his new reading program that I got him, to inspire him towards scholarly success, so you see these purchases are so entirely reasonable and justifiable.

I splash gifts around to other people like money doesn't mean anything, like we're not in a recession. Hey, these people have an emotional need, if not always a physical one, and I'm filling it. I sometimes spend with her in mind: my mother would have wanted you to have this, I'll buy it out of her (theoretical and metaphorical) legacy. More often, I just have a generous whim, I feel good about it, and I act on it.

I convinced D to spend a large amount on a new pair of designer jeans and clothes for work, because he finally found the sort of thing he was wanting. Justification: We never spend money on clothes for him. (And we're paying out the nose, so to speak, for the jeans, but he loves them and looks good in them; as opposed to the countless pairs of jeans, in prices ranging from super-cheap-on-sale to just below what we spent for these, which I have tried and returned because they don't fit him. And we had a gift card.)

Yes, he authorized the purchase... but I sort of hold the purse strings. You're wondering why, aren't you? I hear you pondering whether you should give D a small hint: Hm-hmm, an outlet for grief is all very well, but perhaps a little steadiness and economy, and a few other Jane Austenian qualities would not go amiss, have you considered having a little chat with your wife?

I am fortunate that the funds are, technically, there to be spent. And I came by part of this honestly from my mother, in the genes or the upbringing: she had a sanguine streak that allowed her to spend freely for something without robbing the whim of all its joy by subjecting it to an overly ponderous process of justification. Which is to say she justified it easily, and she did it immediately. I have to admit that learning to scrimp and save and make the most out of every dollar is not something I learned from her. It's not something I wanted to learn, nor something she wanted to teach me.

An acquaintance remarked to me that everyone she knew was cutting back for Christmas this year, whether they actually had to or not. I thought, we're not. In fact, it feels like we're going all out. She told me it probably feels that way because now we have three kids, but I know that it's not the three kids, because stockings can be filled inexpensively (although it would help if I had been raised to appreciate how a dollar can be stretched), it's the attitude towards what the three kids, and their mother's cousins, should have. (Actually, my cousins are not people I spend on, bless their dear hearts.)

And at the end of the day, it's grief, working itself out in a peculiar-but-not-strange sort of way in me. I recognize it, which is good. And I'm actually having little chats with myself (since I hold the purse strings).  I'm setting up budgets (not something I'm good at) and planning frugality for next year. Because first, of course, we have to get through Christmas — and if there's a time to splash gifts around and remember people whom you haven't talked to since hospice stopped coming to take care of your mother a year ago, for example, it's Christmas time. And the new year always feels so fresh, whether you're the resolutions type or not, so it makes it easier to tweak your life philosophy (or rather, your execution of it).

I'm looking forward to Christmas, and to spreading around all the joy in the form of packages that I want to. Last December, I went shopping for my mother for the boys and brought her back an assortment to choose from. "Why can't they have all of it?" was her loving, drained, near-whisper of a response.

I think I've carried that spirit with me through the whole year: a spirit of largesse, and an end-of-life perspective on what money really means, and what it doesn't.

I think that's exactly the way my grief was supposed to be spent.