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Where do I go From Here?

Where do I go From Here?Kim C. lost her husband David two weeks before 9/11. On August 28, 2001, just after dinner and doing the dishes, the 46-year-old went out for a country ride on his new motorcycle, and to get some milk for the next morning's breakfast.

Kim, who works for an airline, was in the habit of retiring early. She worked a 5 a.m. shift as a customer service agent. She had taken a shower that night, eaten a bowl of ice cream, and was about go to bed at 9 p.m. when the youngest of her two teenage daughters said there were two police officers at the door.
 
The officer said, "There's no easy way to tell you this ... there's been an accident."
 
The police officers knew David and Kim. One was a family acquaintance; the other had grown up with Kim in her hometown. Kim remembers asking them which hospital her husband had been taken to. She shook her head thinking how she'd warned David not to buy the "bike" earlier that month.
 
But the officer's reply hit her in the stomach: "He's not at a hospital, Kim. He's dead at the scene."
 
David had failed to navigate a sharp bend in the road, and had struck a telephone pole, which killed him instantly. There were no other vehicles involved. Kim would never know exactly what caused the accident on the warm August night.
 
From that point on, the 44-year-old widow couldn't stop thinking: "What am I going to do?"
 
David had always been good with the family finances, especially investments. Kim trusted him implicitly with that task throughout their 19-year marriage. Now, everything was in her lap, including the funeral and burial arrangements.
 
"I didn't even know if he wanted to be cremated or embalmed," she recalls. "I asked my in-laws if they would go with me to the funeral home, but they said they trusted me to make the right decisions. They were in their own shock. I didn't want to do the wrong thing and put them in more pain. I don't know how I did it."
 
Kim describes the memorial service as a mob scene—so much grief. David and Kim's families were close, and they had extensive networks of friends in their small community and church, where David handled the finances.
 
The worst part, however, came after. "When the memorial and burial are over with, then there's no one around," Kim says. "You feel so alone, and you're trying to figure out what to do with your life."

 
Then came 9/11.
 
"I had taken a leave of absence after David's death," Kim recalls. "But after 9/11, I became worried that I would lose my job with the airline. It was a frightening time. I went back to work in October."
 
Kim's sister helped her go through the financial maze left by David's death. "There were accounts I didn't even know we had, different bank accounts. My husband was a packrat with statements. There was stuff scattered all over the place. It took a year or two to figure everything out," she explains.
 
Kim says part of her being unprepared at his death stemmed from her reluctance to ever discuss finances. "A lot of females are like that—'busy as wives and moms' afraid of money and finances, and trusting their husbands to do it."
 
Another aspect was that David never wanted to discuss death. She had convinced him to have their wills drafted, and he did have a modest life insurance policy, but he refused to talk about dying.
 
She says: "I think it should be a prerequisite when two people get married that they sit down and have some kind of form to fill out that shows what they've got, and have room to expand on to include more assets as you stay together."

 

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