A Senior and $7000.

An elderly lady was robbed on her deathbed in Toronto, recently. As the radio and newspapers covered the story, I couldn't help but wonder why a dying woman would want to keep her valuables on her--in the hospital. Apparently, the deceased had been robbed previously and had decided to bring everything into the hospital with her. She chose not to leave anything with her family. In a discussion with my parents, both seniors, and my mother-in-law, we tried to rationalize the lady's behaviour. When the matriarch has been in the hospital, I take her valuables, basically her purse--she wears no jewellery, home. I don't go through it; it's not mine. My mother thought the lady in question kept her things for sentimental reasons. My father thought she may have kept things close to her for control purposes; assuming she was in a healthy state of mind, the lady could have been doling out legacies from her deathbed. It may have been a way of insuring visitors came to the hospital. Either way, it is sort of pathetic. Death offers no chance, in the words of Thornton Wilder, to take it with you. So why have it around? And, sentimentality? I honestly don't understand. Photographs and pictures are sentimental; a wedding ring may be meaningful; but things? I cannot understand how things can bring meaning and comfort at one's end. Of course, I am judging this poor lady. It was terrible for her to be robbed on her deathbed; but, of all the things she will be remembered for, it is also terrible this one decision on her part will also be part of her history.