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mallorys_cameraMy last client yesterday was an 85-year-old man with oversized Poindexter glasses, crumbling teeth, and one of those mobility assistors that’s half cane/half walker. Mr. Reinquist (not his real name.) Widower these past seven years. Reminded me a lot of what Mark might have been like had he managed to make it to 85.
Very affable gentleman, though so withered and frail I wondered how he’d been able to drive all the way from Staatsburg on those slick icy roads. And was very glad he’d been driving nowhere near me!
“I was a forest ranger,” he told me cheerfully. “People used to come up to me all the time: ‘My son wants to be a forest ranger!’ ‘Is your son twelve?’ I’d ask. ‘Why, yes! How did you know?’” Mr. Reinquist laughed. “Twelve is the prime time for forest ranger ambitions.”
It soon became apparent to me that bright as he was – and he was very smart – that Mr. Reinquist was in waaaaaay over his head because Mr. Reinquist was – well. Eighty-five years old.
Owed a huge amount of taxes because the feds weren’t taking enough out of his pension to cover the taxes.
Damn! I thought. How hard is this? It’s not rocket science. You call the pensioner and ask, 'Sir! Would you like more withheld to cover your federal taxes?'
Mr. Reinquist had assets. For most of his life his life, he’d stayed on top of them. But he was having trouble now. And who could blame him?
I had to sort through an enormous manilla dossier to pluck out the relevant tax documents. That took an hour. Like most people, even 50 years younger than he is, he has a tendency to think anything the bank or brokerage sends him is tax-relevant. Useful Rule of Thumb: For the most part, the only tax forms documenting revenue that are pertinent are those marked W-2 or 1099.
Took me 20 minutes to compile the 1040.
He owed much more this year than last.
I compared this year's return to last's. Yup. IRA disbursement. Nothing taken out.
We are not supposed to give anything resembling financial advice, but in good conscience, I really couldn’t let this situation slide without saying something.
“Mr. Reinquist,” I asked. “Do you have children?”
“One son,” Mr. R said cheerfully. “Lives in Texas. Before that, he lived in Arizona. Before that – well, I’ve lost track of all the places he’s lived!”
Right. The kid who growing up had only one burning ambition: Get the hell out of Staatsburg and never look back.
“Mr. Reinquist – I’m not quite sure how to phrase this, and I don’t want to offend you. But you need help with this. It’s a lot of details to keep track of, you know? I think you need to hire an accountant. An accountant would not make your financial decisions for you. All an accountant would do is organize your finances to make it easier for you to make the right decisions.”
Mr. Reinquist looked sad. And then, he looked… relieved.
“My father died when he was only 39 years old,” he said. “So I never thought I would make it this long. I’m still shocked sometimes when I wake up and find myself here.
“It was a tough time. I was 17; I joined the military. The Korean War was going on. The Army gave me a bunch of tests – and what do you know. They discovered I was a genius. I didn’t feel like a genius. But I had – I’ve always had – this memory. My mother had it, too. I can look at something once, and it stays inside my head.”
“Eidetic memory,” I said. “That’s what it’s called.”
He nodded wearily. Then he proceeded to reel off every one of the numbers on the 1099s I’d just processed. “See? They’re in my head.”
I sighed. “Mr. Reinquist, they may be in your head, but I think there’s a lot of other stuff in your head, too, and I think you would benefit from having someone to help you keep it all straight. That’s all I’m saying.”
“No, I know you’re right,” he said. “I’ve been thinking what I really want to do is sell the house – it’s just a huge albatross around my neck – and move into an assisted living situation.”
“You’d like an assisted living situation!” I said brightly. “They’re very nice, and there are so many people around to talk to! I imagine it gets lonely living alone –“
“I used to lunch with friends, four or five times a week. And then one day I woke up and thought, Why the hell am I doing this? So, I stopped.” He shot me a rueful smile.
I walked him back out to his car. Much warmer yesterday than the subzero temp days preceding, but overnight, we’d had a huge storm, and the earth was still so frozen that all the rain that had fallen had immediately turned to ice when it hit the ground.
What asshole would leave his 85-year-old father to deal with this stuff alone? I thought.
###
Later that evening, Max called. He’d spent the holiday weekend with his father and MaryAnn in Tustin, and since MaryAnn -- Mrs. H____ 2.0 -- is one of those social media enthusiasts who documents each and every event in her life with her FB friends, I’d been able to track him. (We are quite the civilized extended family! RTT always stays with the H___s when he's in the part of Southern California, and in a recent email to me, Isabella described him as her "sort of brother.")
I was relieved.
“How are you feeling?” I cooed.
“About the same,” he said. “More or less.”
That was funny. Because he sure didn’t sound depressed.
Frankly, I’m not sure he is depressed in any clinical sense of the word.
I think he’s in the first year of law school! And hates it. As all intelligent, sensitive human beings must.
The mere fact that he talks so openly about being depressed and is proactively seeking support and therapy for depression is enough to make me think that he’s not depressed. In my experience, depressed people are really secretive about the way they feel.
“How does the depression manifest?” I asked.
“I’m really frightened of failing,” he said. “And then I sabotage myself by skipping classes, turning assignments in late – I get extensions –“
“Well, that’s not good!”
“Mom. I know that’s not good.”
To me, this sounds like very protracted stage fright. A debilitating emotion, to be sure. Anxiety. But not depression.
I don’t quite know what to do beyond sending him $$$$ and being as annoying as possible. I figure if I get him incredibly annoyed at me – angry with me, furious with me, the overly ambitious maternal gargoyle who pushed him academically so hard in the first place – then maybe he won’t feel sad.
I’m lucky in some regards. Dissociation has always been my survival mechanism. When I feel like channeling my inner Sylvia Plath, I just go to the movies! Doesn’t matter what movie! There’s something about sitting in a dark auditorium, watching frames flicker 24 times a second on an oversized canvas screen, that clears my brain. (Does Goddard’s famous observation still hold true in the Digital Age?) Catapults me right into a fugue state. So various, so beautiful, so new…
###
In other news, I finished reading a very bad YA novel called Beautiful Creatures. We are not just talking awful. We are talking embarrassment.
Did make me speculate that maybe the secret to making sure the current work-in-progress tops the NYT Bestseller List is to turn Henry Miller into a vampire! Or a Cthulu worshipper! Or maybe I just change the name of the novel to Zombies in the Tropic of Cancer!
Very affable gentleman, though so withered and frail I wondered how he’d been able to drive all the way from Staatsburg on those slick icy roads. And was very glad he’d been driving nowhere near me!
“I was a forest ranger,” he told me cheerfully. “People used to come up to me all the time: ‘My son wants to be a forest ranger!’ ‘Is your son twelve?’ I’d ask. ‘Why, yes! How did you know?’” Mr. Reinquist laughed. “Twelve is the prime time for forest ranger ambitions.”
It soon became apparent to me that bright as he was – and he was very smart – that Mr. Reinquist was in waaaaaay over his head because Mr. Reinquist was – well. Eighty-five years old.
Owed a huge amount of taxes because the feds weren’t taking enough out of his pension to cover the taxes.
Damn! I thought. How hard is this? It’s not rocket science. You call the pensioner and ask, 'Sir! Would you like more withheld to cover your federal taxes?'
Mr. Reinquist had assets. For most of his life his life, he’d stayed on top of them. But he was having trouble now. And who could blame him?
I had to sort through an enormous manilla dossier to pluck out the relevant tax documents. That took an hour. Like most people, even 50 years younger than he is, he has a tendency to think anything the bank or brokerage sends him is tax-relevant. Useful Rule of Thumb: For the most part, the only tax forms documenting revenue that are pertinent are those marked W-2 or 1099.
Took me 20 minutes to compile the 1040.
He owed much more this year than last.
I compared this year's return to last's. Yup. IRA disbursement. Nothing taken out.
We are not supposed to give anything resembling financial advice, but in good conscience, I really couldn’t let this situation slide without saying something.
“Mr. Reinquist,” I asked. “Do you have children?”
“One son,” Mr. R said cheerfully. “Lives in Texas. Before that, he lived in Arizona. Before that – well, I’ve lost track of all the places he’s lived!”
Right. The kid who growing up had only one burning ambition: Get the hell out of Staatsburg and never look back.
“Mr. Reinquist – I’m not quite sure how to phrase this, and I don’t want to offend you. But you need help with this. It’s a lot of details to keep track of, you know? I think you need to hire an accountant. An accountant would not make your financial decisions for you. All an accountant would do is organize your finances to make it easier for you to make the right decisions.”
Mr. Reinquist looked sad. And then, he looked… relieved.
“My father died when he was only 39 years old,” he said. “So I never thought I would make it this long. I’m still shocked sometimes when I wake up and find myself here.
“It was a tough time. I was 17; I joined the military. The Korean War was going on. The Army gave me a bunch of tests – and what do you know. They discovered I was a genius. I didn’t feel like a genius. But I had – I’ve always had – this memory. My mother had it, too. I can look at something once, and it stays inside my head.”
“Eidetic memory,” I said. “That’s what it’s called.”
He nodded wearily. Then he proceeded to reel off every one of the numbers on the 1099s I’d just processed. “See? They’re in my head.”
I sighed. “Mr. Reinquist, they may be in your head, but I think there’s a lot of other stuff in your head, too, and I think you would benefit from having someone to help you keep it all straight. That’s all I’m saying.”
“No, I know you’re right,” he said. “I’ve been thinking what I really want to do is sell the house – it’s just a huge albatross around my neck – and move into an assisted living situation.”
“You’d like an assisted living situation!” I said brightly. “They’re very nice, and there are so many people around to talk to! I imagine it gets lonely living alone –“
“I used to lunch with friends, four or five times a week. And then one day I woke up and thought, Why the hell am I doing this? So, I stopped.” He shot me a rueful smile.
I walked him back out to his car. Much warmer yesterday than the subzero temp days preceding, but overnight, we’d had a huge storm, and the earth was still so frozen that all the rain that had fallen had immediately turned to ice when it hit the ground.
What asshole would leave his 85-year-old father to deal with this stuff alone? I thought.
###
Later that evening, Max called. He’d spent the holiday weekend with his father and MaryAnn in Tustin, and since MaryAnn -- Mrs. H____ 2.0 -- is one of those social media enthusiasts who documents each and every event in her life with her FB friends, I’d been able to track him. (We are quite the civilized extended family! RTT always stays with the H___s when he's in the part of Southern California, and in a recent email to me, Isabella described him as her "sort of brother.")
I was relieved.
“How are you feeling?” I cooed.
“About the same,” he said. “More or less.”
That was funny. Because he sure didn’t sound depressed.
Frankly, I’m not sure he is depressed in any clinical sense of the word.
I think he’s in the first year of law school! And hates it. As all intelligent, sensitive human beings must.
The mere fact that he talks so openly about being depressed and is proactively seeking support and therapy for depression is enough to make me think that he’s not depressed. In my experience, depressed people are really secretive about the way they feel.
“How does the depression manifest?” I asked.
“I’m really frightened of failing,” he said. “And then I sabotage myself by skipping classes, turning assignments in late – I get extensions –“
“Well, that’s not good!”
“Mom. I know that’s not good.”
To me, this sounds like very protracted stage fright. A debilitating emotion, to be sure. Anxiety. But not depression.
I don’t quite know what to do beyond sending him $$$$ and being as annoying as possible. I figure if I get him incredibly annoyed at me – angry with me, furious with me, the overly ambitious maternal gargoyle who pushed him academically so hard in the first place – then maybe he won’t feel sad.
I’m lucky in some regards. Dissociation has always been my survival mechanism. When I feel like channeling my inner Sylvia Plath, I just go to the movies! Doesn’t matter what movie! There’s something about sitting in a dark auditorium, watching frames flicker 24 times a second on an oversized canvas screen, that clears my brain. (Does Goddard’s famous observation still hold true in the Digital Age?) Catapults me right into a fugue state. So various, so beautiful, so new…
###
In other news, I finished reading a very bad YA novel called Beautiful Creatures. We are not just talking awful. We are talking embarrassment.
Did make me speculate that maybe the secret to making sure the current work-in-progress tops the NYT Bestseller List is to turn Henry Miller into a vampire! Or a Cthulu worshipper! Or maybe I just change the name of the novel to Zombies in the Tropic of Cancer!
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no subject
Date: 2016-02-17 03:48 pm (UTC)Horror, embarrassment, and shame. And there are sequels. Lots of them. I did not read those.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-17 03:54 pm (UTC)And Goddam if Beautiful Creatures didn't make a huge, honkin', steamin' pile of money!!!!! :-)