ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

My boyfriend and I talked to his mother on the phone this evening. Later I found out from him that apparently when they went out to his brother’s house on Sunday to go through some of his things, a fair amount of pillaging had already occurred. A variety of his personal effects had gone mysteriously missing. From what I gleaned, none of it was extraordinarily valuable on its own, but a host of miscellaneous items were conspicuously absent. For instance, it appears that we are expected to believe he did not own a single DVD.

After the funeral on Saturday a group of his friends gathered out at the farm and had a cookout. It kind of makes me wish that when his sister and I were out there, we’d tried harder to get into the house. How much of his stuff was still there on Friday that wasn’t by the time Saturday ended? Not that we necessarily would have thought we needed to take any of his stuff ourselves to prevent other people getting their paws on it, but…at least we would know more for sure.

After my boyfriend told me about this, I couldn’t stop thinking about how tacky it seems to snag your buddy’s stuff after he dies and before his family has a chance to look over his belongings. I worked through the whole thing in my head and at first I thought, well, maybe there’s nothing so wrong with people taking something for sentimental purposes, to remind them of a friend who died. Then I decided that probably DVDs and an X-Box 360 are not the most sentimental choices they could have made.

It makes me wonder, though, if people had their pick of my stuff, what would they choose? I hope they would pick things like my jewelry and crafts and stuffed animals and not just the things that have some material value. And I hope they would wait to let the family have first crack at it.