A Dead Man’s Checks

Every month I get paid by a dead man. This has been going on since October of 2014, when one of my former tenants passed away in his early 40s from cancer. He had set up his rent payments for automatic delivery and never got the chance to stop the recurrence before he died. I’ve tried everything to get the payments to stop coming. I reached out to the widow but she never responded to my calls or letters. I spoke to the brother-in-law who said he would contact the bank to stop the payments, but the checks keep coming. I called the bank but they said they couldn’t stop the payments unless the account holder requested it, so there you go. Unless the widow or the brother-in-law puts in the request to stop the payments, there’s nothing I can do but receive them, void them, and throw them out. Over, and over, and over again.

The gentleman who passed away was very friendly and I genuinely liked him. During chats we found out that we shared a very similar history and set of interests. We even went to the same grad school program, which he had completed just two years before me. Not much older than me, I recognized myself in him, and while I didn’t know him well, his passing rocked my world. That could be me. Now I receive a monthly reminder from him about the precious minutes.

When the monthly check arrives, I often open it and set it on my desk mantle, sometimes with the intention of calling the bank or the brother-in-law again, and sometimes because I don’t know why. Sometimes I shred the check right away and sometimes I let a stack of them pile up. Sometimes I forget about the stack altogether, until another one arrives. They used to make me very uncomfortable, haunting reminders that they were, but now I’m resigned to acknowledge them with a perturbed gratitude. Unless I want to be a jerk and deposit them, giving the poor widow a heart attack when she sees her account depleted (if she even knows this account exists), I’m stuck with them.

What would you do with checks from a dead man? If you were getting these, how would they impact your day? Your week? Your perspective? Would you throw them in the trash as quickly as you can, so you don’t have to think about the grim realities we face? Would you take a look at them and ponder what unfinished business you have in this life? Would you be a little kinder, a little more patient? Maybe a little less patient because the clock is ticking?

Ever since I’ve been getting these checks, I’ve been making extra sure to make the minutes count. At first it felt like I had this noose hanging around my neck, constantly telling me that I wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t living enough. That I needed to live big and go on tons of adventures, conquering as much of the world as I could before my flame went out. It took me a while to realize that the more important minutes are the little ones. The shared ones. The ones where we extend a simple kindness or show up for the people we care about. Nowadays, with the constant hum of social media showing everybody’s best version of themselves, it can feel like you’re missing out on so much, but you’re not. You know who is?

The minutes we have, don’t have to be extraordinary. They just have to be kind. Helpful. Caring. Purposeful. And when time permits, yeah, throw in a little extraordinary. But if we’re not present for them, all of our minutes will be wasted. I get a monthly reminder of that.