Personal Story

This is a very personal story.  It comes from my heart and perhaps it will touch yours. More importantly, it might help you make a positive difference for someone you love.

This weekend, as I sat on my bed, I noticed my Bible lying there on my bedside table.  I keep it open to the 91st psalm and I also keep a letter from my dad on that page.  It is the only letter he ever wrote to me.  It was written in October 1977  when a stamp cost 13 cents.

My father wrote the letter, then took the time to drive it all the way downtown to the Billings post office at midnight  He came home, suffered an aneurysm,  went into a coma and died 8 days later.  To this day, I am amazed at this entire event.

I opened the letter and read it yet again.The letter was sad.  Dad was talking about his medical problems, their monthly bills, and his financial worries. I think he knew he was going to cross over, and that is why he wrote me the only letter I ever got from him.  But the content was grim and I am saddened every time I read it to know that his last communication with me was about fear around money.

It shoudn’t have been that way. My father and mother worked hard all of their lives.  My dad owned a carpeting and furnishings store in Montana and was well known and loved throughout a five state area surrounding Montana, where he did his business.  In fact, at his funeral, St Luke’s church was filled to capacity and even had lines out the door and down the sidewalk. 

My dad touched a lot of lives and left a fabulous legacy of a man who truly did make a difference in many lives.  A good man, and yet, his final thoughts before his transition were about financial worries.  With several heart attacks, recent open heart surgery and continuing complications, all that he had worked for was now being threatened by medical expenses.  It all came down to money.  Not enough money. 

So on the last lucid day of his life, my father was writing me about his financial worries and how he didn’t know how they “were going to make it.” His business  had been recently sold to an unscrupulous person who filed bankruptcy a few months later, and essentially wiped out 40 years of very hard work by my father.  So he checked out.  He went into a coma and eight days later, he officially died.  

My mother, having lost my father and her entire financial security, developed Alzheimer’s very quickly and lingered in that no man’s land for the next 20 years. For both of them, in the end, it was about not enough money.  And that is the plight of many of our seniors in this country. 

I can only wonder if Reverse Mortgages were available when my parents were struggling if they might not have lived many years longer – happily and stress free.  They owned their home free and clear — they could have experienced a completely different financial reality.  That is why I am such an advocate for this fabulous product.

“A banker is someone who loans you an umbrella when the sun is shining and takes it back when it’s raining.”  Mark Twain.

Well, the GOOD NEWS is this:  A Reverse Mortgage can be your umbrella rain or shine and the bank NEVER takes it back.