Inheritance

Ligeia has just received an inheritance from a great or maybe a great-great aunt well over 100. Her great aunt Lena Bartlett had originally been from New York’s southern tier, but she had met her husband Hank, who was from North Hollywood. They had moved to the opposite coast and her life had been lived far away from the rest of the family. 

Aunt Lena, of whom Ligeia had seen one or two very old photos, had been very attractive, but she was little more than a memory to the family members who had remained in the east. They were a bit like a clan, not very partial to outsiders. There were a few letters or cards from Christmas, rather, nothing more. To be honest, Ligeia hadn’t given her distant relative more than an hour of her entire life. They had never spoken, had never heard the other’s voice, never had been in the same place at the same time. Aunt Lena could be forgiven if she never had known Ligeia existed.

This helps explain why it had taken the executors of Lena Bartlett’s will quite a while to locate Ligeia. The internet made it possible, but then it proved to be a lot harder to obtain the documents required to verify the family relationship. Ligeia had been reticent to send that information and had also dragged her heels in responding. It wasn’t clear to her that the persons who had contacted her were to be trusted. They were complete strangers. She had learned to be cautious.

And now, without warning, Ligeia has inherited something in her great aunt’s will. The will of a complete stranger. Was this some sort of scheme to extract money from her first, like the Nigerian princes like to do? In the end, she had complied, and a check had arrived, accompanied by a letter of explanation.

It has turned out to be a considerable amount of money. It’s nowhere near enough to provide her with income until retirement, but Ligeia is quite frugal by habit and is overwhelmed at seeing the number of zeroes on the check. It will go right into the bank until she can set her thoughts straight. She has some concerns and doesn’t want to simply resolve them by pouring money into them. Revenue might not be the whole issue; the difficulties might come from within her. No shoot-from-the-hip decisions that could cause a financial disaster for her.

“Wait! There is a catch! I knew it!” Ligeia is more than a little upset, but she realizes she hasn’t lost anything. You can’t lose what you’ve never had.

The catch has been spelled out in the letter that came with the check.

“It says here that in order to receive the funds, it is hereby stipulated that Ligeia Moore has to spend a year and a month working as one of the following: a travel writer; a curator for a museum of the future; an artist in residence in Canada; a wildlife rehabilitator; or an apprentice to an undertaker. Assistance will be provided in obtaining the proper working environment for the position that is selected. Thus, there will not be an insecurity or loss of income that would require using the inheritance during the required thirteen months.”

So this was serious. It wasn’t Ligeia’s imagination. The synchronicity of the receipt of the letter and her recent need to seek different employment (harassment is so stressful to prove) was what made her gulp. 

“Dear Aunt Lena, whom I never met, I just want to say - in case there happens to be a Heaven after all - thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will try to deserve your generosity.”

Corny, but effective. A grown woman in her forties, Ligeia suddenly felt like a girl. She had done nothing to earn the money. She felt guilty.

And so Ligeia began to deliberate, although she only does so for an hour or so. We should keep in mind that she is a photographer. She has won awards for her work in Maine. Unfortunately, the other photographers in the state are brutally competitive. For Ligeia, it is not a matter of clique or social status; she does what she does out of her passion for the unexpected shot, when the eye of the human plus the eye of the mechanical lens become a superpower. 

At those moments, there is no competition, only the joy of seeing. 

Perhaps this was why Ligeia was oddly drawn to the last option. The fact that she was even considering it, this working alongside an undertaker, gave her a chill.she almost regretted receiving the inheritance. Such work would make any photographer with a curious mind study the opportunities for taking pictures that would never reappear. Perspectives on nude figures. Angles of grief, from the side and head on. The posturing of skeletons around the casket or the photo board. Portraits of miurners telling stories, grieving, remembering.

There was nothing morbid in considering the setting, but after a few minutes Ligeia put it aside. She needed something more healing.she’d had enough of trauma and aggression.

“You know, the first option is a really good fit. Travel writer is not a stretch in any way from walking around taking photos.”

 In fact, Ligeia had already published two or three articles from her travels. This was what gave her pause.

“It’s really not fair to chose this option. It is hard to distinguish travel writing and photography from a lot of what I do now.”

Yes, she felt guilty. She had never met Great Aunt Lena, but she imagined the inheritance that had fallen from the sky was in reality a test of some sort. She did not want to fail the test. It could very well be a ‘mettle test’ to find out what a person was made of, how tough and brave she was.

All her life, Ligeia had wanted to be tough and brave. She wanted to be smart, too, but that came after the other two qualities.

Now she considered working in a museum of the future. She knew it would would drive her crazy. Maybe for that reason she should choose this option. Yet she always in rusted the distant past in her work.

“How do you photograph the future?” She asked herself. “I need a handle to locate my images, a place in the real world, and the older the place, the better,”

Thinking about the future, for those of us who thrive in the past as it exists in our present, is poor torture. We don’t like future until it becomes present, or something like that. We don’t even like looking up at the stars and planets a whole lot. That’s too much like nothingness, like a dead world, all white and black.

This was all just pure speculation on Ligeia’s part, but she too might be forgiven for the discomfort she felt. She put this option aside as well.

“Artist in residence. This is a dream.”

 Ligeia sighed, because this was the option she wanted most, but knew she had to put aside.Too close to her current profession. She would feel guilty taking all that money, just as guilty as if she had chosen to work as a travel writer for the required length of time.

“Maybe if I chose a hard-to-reach country, a village off the beaten path?”

She knew the answer. She had done a residency before. She had already reached some out-of-the-way places. This would constitute simply another idyllic job that would come to an end, after which she would be jolted, catapulted back to reality.

“Well, it looks like that leaves wildlife rehabilitation. I have not taken enough pictures of animals, and could learn about their habitats, the threats to their survival.”

She was right, of course. A photographer stood to learn a lot in a center for rehabilitation of wild animals. Not all of what might be learned would be visual. There were bound to be stories of poaching and others of heroics. Yes, it was what would satisfy both the giver of the inheritance and its recipient. Ligeia liked to think so.

Should we doubt the sincerity of this decision, we might note that she was a member of the green party. She had seen the damage in progress in some of those remote areas. It had been heartbreaking .

“What was my great aunt like?” Ligeia wondered. Despite years and miles of distance, they had establushed a connection. It felt eerie.

Ligeia went to work at the animal rehabilitation center in Surry, Maine. While there, she did everything according to plan. She took many, many photographs. She took panoramic views and close-ups. She studied them all carefully. She helped bind wounded limbs, damage created by bullets or traps, lightning or flooding. She helped apply creams and salves, some of them made from plants and trees Ligeia had never heard of or seen in books. She learned to track animals, especially wounded ones.

All the while she though about great aunt Lena. 

“She wanted me to do this for a reason,” she told herself. That was the easy way to look at it: Aunt Lena had offered her a perfect match, a professional focus that sothed and strengthened.

Yet Ligeia couldn’t account for the other four options as clearly. Then, it happened. A year and a month after the first letter had been delivered, a second letter arrived. The second letter was not from the executors of the will. It was from her great aunt herself. That was the whole problem. Here is the letter:

Dear Great-Niece Ligeia:

If you are reading this, you might wonder how I could write and send a letter from the grave. Or maybe you thought I had someone post it thirteen months after my death. Both are possible explanations. We needn’t dally on this point.

First, I ought to explain why you received an inheritance from me.

I have no living children and my husband (you had no reason to ever know this, but his name was Lionel) is long gone. You are the daughter of the daughter of my much-younger sister, Lillian. You probably knew at least that much about how we are related.

I know which option you chose. If you had chosen the other four, it would have been fine, but this whole inheritance thing would have ended differently. I could see that two of the options would have been, as they call it, a piece of cake. As a travel writer or an artist in residence you would have had no sense of change. You didn’t chose the easy way out.

If you had chosen the museum, you would probably have gone mad. Any person would who is not an astronomer or someone of that sort. The future is scary, isn’t it? We don’t need it or all the robots. But I digress.

I knew you were tempted to take the challenge of the undertaking parlor, but am relieved you did not allow yourself to be drawn from your current difficulties into a dark, unforgiving place. You can do something like that in the future if you still wish.

However, you have chosen the wildlife rehabilitation. Yes, you took with you your training and creativity as a professional photographer, but you did more than watch and shoot. You showed the animals what they meant to you, you didn’t always place the barrier of the mechanical lens between you and the animals. You saw them. They understood your awe, I am sure.

You made the perfect choice. You will see why in a minute.

“Aunt Lena must be alive still!” (This was impossible.)

“But why in the world would she ever do something like this?” (A more reasonable question.)

“Or did she copy the letter five times, with the correct choice to be sent at the end of thirteen months?”

Ligeia was grasping, not at straws, but rather at any logical explanation. Her aunt had died well over three years ago, maybe even four. This letter, which indicated being informed of what Ligeia had done as her requirement for the inheritance, could only have been composed if Lena were still alive.

Right.

Ligeia continued to read the letter:

With your choice, you have shown a willingness to use your knowledge to build some more, something better.

Therefore, I am now bequeathing the rest of my estate to you. (Ligeia gasps, afraid again.)

This second part of the inheritance has stipulations, just as the first did.

One third is to be used for creating and staffing your own wildlife or other animal rescue center. 

The second third is to be used to help you publish a book with some of your photographs. You are already aware that there should be words to accompany the images. You must write those, write the lessons.

The last third is for your use as you see fit. Do try to use it wisely. Consider two causes first and foremost : peace and the environment. I am a very old lady now, and I put things simply. No more war. No more melting glaciers. No more pesticides.

If you do not need it all, this last third of the inheritance, I trust you to dedicate a bit more to making the world a bit better. 

Like Miss Rumphius and her lupines. Like the lupines in Maine.