This is an open-ended question but a serious one. Religious jokes or any others are not appreciated. I am talking mainly about rules that now deceased family or friends passed on to you that have to be followed no matter what.
My family has a bunch of them. For example:
The biggest one deals with mineral rights. My great-grandfathers bought hundreds of thousands of acres worth of them back in the 1930’s and 40’s. Well before the last one died in the early 70’s, they made it known to one key person that those could never be sold even no matter what happens. That turned out to be the smartest financial decision they ever made now that fracking for natural gas has been invented. The order still stands and now I have to enforce it for life in the family no questions asked. I just have to do it with no other thought involved and it is for everyone’s benefit.
The other comes from my grandmother. She made friends with two Nepalese kids playing in the park near her house in Arkansas. She got to know them over time and became quite friendly with them. Their parents fled back to Nepal leaving the kids behind but arranged for a place for them to stay and paid for their schooling because they wanted them to stay in the U.S. permanently even if it did mean breaking up the family. My grandmother became a proxy for their only real family. Before my grandmother died, she told all of us that we have to take care of them for life as well even financially. The financial part isn’t an issue because they are both successful professionals now. The result is that the youngest gets a paid vacation (she is 32) to the Virgin Islands this summer with me and some other family members just because my grandmother said to do it no questions asked and I don’t have a problem with that because I loved my grandmother more than anything.
That is a good one. Maybe I can fake a death scare and make my kids promise me that while they are still young. I think I am going to have to come up with some of my own to keep the tradition intact. I just have no idea if other families do different versions of the same thing.
My grandparents made all of us (as in every relative they could locate) swear on our souls that if anyone thought there was the slightest chance either one of them would turn into vampire after deaht (folklore not the sparkly variety), we would have their bodies cremated and the ashes thrown into the sea (tradiational folklore remedy). This was a real fear of theirs.
Before my grandfather passed away, as one of the conditions of inheritance, he gave me the broken halves of three silver Spanish reals and told me that if anyone were to come to me with one of the matching halves, then I must grant them whatever they ask, no excuses. I balked, naturally, but he said that it must be done as the ancient honor of our family rested on this.
After much deliberation, I eventually agreed. Then he jumped up, pulled out a matching half-coin, dropped his pants and said “Ah-haa. Now suck my dick!”
I promised my grandmother that I’d finish college… It was a big deal to her. She grew up very poor and she worked hard all her life and she didnt want me to know the struggles she had. To her college would’ve meant everything. Things changed in the world but she still wanted the other grand kids and me to finish. I don’t believe she can be “watching” me when I graduate but I know she would be proud if she were here.
Any promise I may make to someone who later died would only be honored if it continued to make sense in the present. I feel no obligation to a past promise to the dead as they are unable to foresee how time and circumstance changes our perspective.
I have nothing similar, and don’t think I’d feel obliged to anything unless I personally agreed to it. In other words, if my father told me I had to do XYZ because it was a longstanding rule that firstborn male Rodgers’ had to, well…too bad - that alone isn’t reason enough to do it. But if I personally promised my father or grandfather I’d do something, that’s a different matter.
When I was little, my father made me swear to him that if I were ever arrested and the cops wanted me to snitch on someone in exchange for a lighter sentence, I wouldn’t do it.
I’m not sure why he asked me to make that particular promise, since as far as I know he’d never done jail time for anything, and since I’ve never been arrested I haven’t ever had an opportunity to break that promise, but there you go.
The only thing in my life that comes close: nearly 30 years ago, my husband and I bought our first house together. The older couple who owned it had built it and lived there some time and I sensed they were reluctant to sell. The woman made sure to tell us about a specific tree in the yard, where it came from, how long it had been there, and that it should never be cut down.
I honestly don’t recall if we’d done anything to it because we didn’t live there all that long, but I didn’t bother conveying her command to the next owners. Did she honestly believe I gave a damn about her sentimental attachment to a tree??
In a related promise, a buddy of mine did many of my tattoos. He died 12 or so years ago of a cerebral aneurysm, going quietly in his sleep. He never charged me for any tats, but always asked that I pay it forward to any of his friends.
Over the years I’ve had several situations arise where I’ve been able to honor his wish.
My dad is an only child and he wasn’t very good at being a husband or a father. We lived next door to his parents (in the house they gave my mom and dad as a wedding gift). My sister and I were very close to our grandparents and they were more like our parents in a lot of ways.
My grandpa suffered a major stroke in 1998 and spent a few days in and out of consciousness, then he was placed on life support. I stayed at the hospital 24/7 and he talked to me a few times during those brief moments of lucidity. With tears in his eyes, he asked me to take care of my grandmother when he was gone. He also asked that I never put her in a nursing home.
He died in 1998. My grandmother was fiercely independent and she made it all on her own until early 2008. She had severe rheumatoid arthritis and was diagnosed with COPD in 2008 (never smoked). My sister and I visited her daily, ran all of her errands, paid her bills and went with her to all of her doctor appointments after that. She survived until February 2011, ultimately dying from stomach cancer. For the last eight months, my sister and I took turns staying with her around the clock.
She died in her own bed and never spent a day in a nursing home. We tried hiring in-home nursing help a couple of times, but they didn’t live up to our standards…so we did it ourselves!
I would have done everything just the same even if my grandpa hadn’t asked me to do it…
They were Roma. One of them from a family that had been in the United States since the time of the American Revolution. Another from a family that immigrated from former Yugoslavia after WWII. Superstitions about vampires existed on both sides and were largely the same.
I’m assuming there’s no statute of limitations on murder in that state - she doesn’t want the body underneath discovered! :eek: (OK, I got nothing.)
I got my husband’s paternal grandmother’s engagement ring as a bequeathed engagement ring; she’d apparently said it was to go to my husband’s then-future wife. I stopped wearing it a few years ago. Between the jealous reactions of some of my sisters-in-law and the attempted pre-marriage demand of my father-in-law that I sign a pre-nup stating I’ll return the ring if we split up, I eventually couldn’t figure out why I should bother continuing to wear a ring that wasn’t even my style. So, it’s in storage waiting for our sole nephew to maybe get engaged someday, and we’ll kick off a whole new round of jealousy and bitterness over our choice of who gets it! Hooray!
Nobody extracted promises. Both my parents made comments about the funeral industry gouging people, and they were ok with cremation, so cremation it was. That was helped along by the fact that she and Dad had moved halfway across the country in search of “America as it used to be.”*
On the other hand, Mom said a couple of times that we should be sure to remove her gold crowns and not bury or cremate them because she had paid a lot of money for them and didn’t want to see that investment slip away. Unfortunately, before she died I managed to crack a crowned tooth lengthwise, to the root. Thinking of Mom’s investment, I researched the best way to sell it, and sent it away to a reputable dental gold recycler. I got less than $20 for it.
Sorry, Mom. That just wasn’t enough to go after at that kind of time. My sisters and I mentioned it, I told them the maximum we’d get, and we dropped the idea.
*Idaho. No problem with Idaho, but their offspring have spread from California (home state - me) to New York (Sister 1) to Louisiana (Sister 2). No way to decide on a burial location.
“On to the year 2000!” and “Never again.” My great-grandfather wanted a unified Europe and an end to all wars in the year 2000 and encouraged us to do what we could towards that goal. He would raise his stick in the air and bellow “On to the year 2000!”
Well, we’re doing pretty well I think. We have a fairly unified Europe, and I will keep doing whatever I can towards it. Of course I will keep doing what I can to end war (it may be little or nothing, but I will do what I can). Not just because he asked, but I do think of him. He would be so proud of Europe. Despite the problems, he would be looking towards the future, always optimistic. I’m sorry he never got to feel a Euro in his hand.
I must be missing something but doesn’t this only become a smart financial decision if you sell at some point? What good does holding on to the rights for eternity do you?
