Money represents the future. We save it, we have it in our wallets, all for things we will do in the future.
Lev has $61 in his wallet. I wonder what he was planning to do with it. He usually spent his money right away when he got his allowance. He must have had plans - buying a new hat on our trip? A gift for Zay's birthday? A new video game? Money that just sits, lonely like us.
Lev had $2800 in the bank. $1000 was from his Great Grandpa Leo when he passed away peacefully at a ripe old age. That was to use when he went to college. That money I transferred to Jaal without much thought. That's what Grandpa Leo would have expected.
$1800 left. My initial thought, within a week after Lev's sudden death is with me still, give it to Zay for a Switzerland fund. That we will do, definitely. When I can wrap my head around the logistics of actually transferring the funds, closing the account, sending a check. Lev and Zay wanted to go to college in Switzerland together. Maybe if that didn't work out just a year abroad in Switzerland.
Why Switzerland? They both said that it was a fairly impulsive choice. They were looking at a map of Europe while talking on the phone one day. Lev chose it because it was in the middle and it looked good. They both researched the country, and decided it was fantastic. It was their Panama, the land of their dreams.
When Zay was here for the memorial, I gave him a little bag of Lev's ashes to bring back to New Hampshire. He always wanted us to move to New Hampshire to be near Zay. Zay's reaction when I gave him the ashes, standing in our kitchen, was to say that he would like to save some of them to bring to Switzerland. He still wanted to go to Switzerland with Lev some day. That's when I decided about the money in Lev's account. It should go to Zay for Switzerland. That much I'm sure of in life.
(Why the Panama reference you might ask? When the kids were little and we lived in Issaquah they had a tape of little old, odd movies that we watched. One of them had this animal that was unhappy where they were living. One day an empty box showed up, and it said Panama on the side. He thought the box smelled wonderful. It smelled like bananas. He said, "Panama, the land of my dreams, where everything smells like bananas." He packed up his things in a little bag and went walking to Panama. He walked for many months. Eventually he came to a small house, a bit of sun, pasture around it. The house had weeds growing in the windows and around it, but it looked like paradise. He said, "this must be Panama, the land of my dreams." And he settled there happily. (It was his house, the same house, but with a little time and perspective added.)
It has been a family joke since then, about Panama, the land of our dreams, where everything smells like bananas. (When we went to Panama, we found out that it did not smell like bananas, but we had a great time there, on the beach, visiting a fantastic bat cave on the island where we stayed.) Lev loved bananas, and we always called Switzerland his Panama.
