Transcription
You know what's funny about a will? Everybody thinks it's about dying.
It's not. A will is the last thing you ever say to the people you love. And most people, most people fill it with the wrong stuff.
I've buried two wives. I've watched friends die with wills thicker than a phone book, full of instructions about who gets the china and who gets the dining table. And their kids are standing at the funeral, not crying about the china. They're crying because pop never said what mattered.
So here's what I'm going to tell you. And I want you to listen close, because this isn't legal advice. I'm a shoemaker, not a lawyer. This is life advice. These are eight things you should never ever put in your will, because if you're saving them for your will, you already waited too long.
Number one, apologies. Do not put an apology in your will. You hear me? Do not die with "I'm sorry" still in your mouth. My friend Carmine Ayello, we grew up together on 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst. Carmine had a falling out with his brother Dominic over a car, a 1961 Chevrolet Impala, burgundy. Beautiful thing. Their father left it to both of them, but there was only one car and two sons, and they fought about it and stopped speaking. That was 1974. 50 years. 50 years over a car that ended up rusting in a garage in Staten Island. Carmine put in his will, "To my brother Dominic, I leave the Impala and my deepest regret that I let pride keep us apart." You know when Dominic read that at the lawyer's office, Carmine was already in the ground, three days in the ground. And Dominic, 78 years old, tough as a brick, sat in that leather chair and wept like a child. Not because he got the car, because he got the apology 50 years too late.
Now, here's what I need you to hear. You've got someone right now, right now, today, you owe an apology to. Maybe it's not 50 years. Maybe it's five months. Maybe it's five days. It doesn't matter. The longer you hold it, the heavier it gets. And the thing about apologies is they don't age well. An apology today is a gift. An apology from the grave is a punishment. Pick up your phone. Not tomorrow. Today. You don't even have to make it a big speech. Just say, "Hey, I've been thinking and I'm sorry about what happened." That's it. Nine words. You can say nine words. Carmine couldn't. And he was one of the toughest guys I ever knew. Tough doesn't help you when you're dead.
And look, I'm not standing here like a saint. There was a stretch years ago when my son Enzo didn't speak to me. Two years of silence. And every day of those two years, I wanted to call him and say things that would have made it worse, because I was angry. I was right, I thought. But being right and being alone, that's a lousy combination. I wrote him a letter instead. Took me 11 drafts. 11. Because the first 10 were all about defending myself. And the 11th was the first one that was actually about him. That's when it worked. The apology that works is the one that isn't about you.
Number two, explanations for why you loved one kid more than another. Oh, you think I'm joking? I'm not joking. You know how many wills I've heard about secondhand from my customers over the years? People sitting in my shop getting their shoes fixed, telling me things they'd never tell their priest. How many wills had some version of, "To my eldest son, I leave the house because he always understood me better." You just put a bomb in your family. A bomb with a delayed fuse. Every kid knows. They know. You think you're hiding it and you're not. The kid who gets less, they already suspected. Now you confirmed it in writing with a notary stamp. Congratulations. You just turned your death into evidence.
Here's the thing, and I say this to you if you're a parent. If you love your kids differently, and you do, everyone does. It's not a sin. Your job is to make sure each one feels like they got enough. Not equal, enough. My daughter Lucia and my son Enzo, God bless them both. They're different people. Lucia's warm like bread right out of the oven. Enzo's more like his old man. Takes a while to heat up, but then he burns hot. I loved them both with everything I had, but I showed it different ways. With Lucia, I talked. With Enzo, I worked beside him, quiet, side by side. He didn't need words. He needed presence.
If you're sitting here thinking, "My kids know I love them." Do they? When's the last time you made sure? Not assumed. Made sure. Call each one this week. Not a group text. Individual calls. Ask them something real. "How are you actually doing?" And then shut up and listen. That's all it takes. But you have to do it while you're breathing.
Number three, conditions. "I leave $50,000 to my granddaughter, provided she finishes college." "I leave the house to my son on the condition he divorces that woman." You're dead. You don't get to run people's lives from the grave. That's not love. That's control. And control dressed up in inheritance money is still control.
I had a customer, lovely woman, came in every October to get her winter boots resoled. Her name was Helen Park. Korean lady lived over on Fifth Avenue. Her mother-in-law left the family home to Helen's husband, but only on the condition that they maintain the character of the home, which everyone knew meant "don't let Helen redecorate." Don't let the Korean daughter-in-law change the curtains. 35 years of marriage and the dead woman was still running the living room from the cemetery.
You want to know what your money should say when you're gone? It should say, "I trusted you. I believed in you. Here. Take this and build something I can't even imagine because I'm not there to see it." And listen, I understand the impulse. You want to protect people. You want to make sure they don't blow it. But here's what I've learned in 106 years on this earth. You cannot protect anyone from being human. Your grandkid might drop out of college and start a business that changes the world. Your son might stay married to that woman and be happier than you ever were. You don't know. You think you know, but you don't. Let go. Let go while you're alive and definitely let go when you're dead.
If there's someone in your life right now that you're trying to control with money, with guilt, with silence, with conditions, stop today. Take your hands off the steering wheel of their life. It was never your car.
Number four, your version of the family history. Oh, this one. This one I feel in my chest. Don't put a letter in your will telling everyone the real story of what happened in 1987 or whenever. Don't use your death as the moment you finally set the record straight. Because here's the truth. Your version is just that, your version. Everyone in the story has their own version. And none of them are wrong, and none of them are completely right. I've lived long enough to realize that memory is a liar. A beautiful liar, but a liar.
I remember things about my first wife, Anna Maria. I remember the yellow dress she was wearing the day she died. I'm sure of it. My daughter Lucia told me once gently, "Papa, Mama's dress that day was blue. I saw it in the photograph." And she showed me the photograph and it was blue. But in my mind, it's yellow. It will always be yellow because that's how grief paints things.
So, don't leave behind some manifesto about how Uncle Tony really stole from the family or how your sister was the one who started the fight at Christmas 1983. You're leaving a story with no chance for rebuttal. That's not justice. That's a monologue. If there's a story that needs telling, tell it now. Sit down at the kitchen table with the people involved. Bring some coffee, maybe some wine, and hash it out like adults. It'll be messy. It'll be loud. That's fine. At least everyone gets to talk. At least it's a conversation and not a verdict.
Number five, guilt. Don't you dare leave a letter that says, "I hope you realize now what you put me through." Don't leave behind some accounting of every sacrifice you made, every birthday party you funded, every time you drove two hours to their soccer game. I see this with parents. They keep score. They keep a ledger in their head. "I did this for you and this and this." And they think the will is the final invoice.
Let me tell you something about sacrifice. If you did something for your kids and you kept track of it, it wasn't a sacrifice. It was an investment. And investments expect returns. A sacrifice is when you do it and you let it go. You release it. It's gone. It belonged to them the moment you gave it.
My father Enzo, God rest his soul. That man worked 16-hour days, six days a week, factory during the day, fixing shoes at night on the kitchen table while I slept. His hands were so calloused they looked like they were made of wood. You know what he never said to me? Not once. "Look what I did for you." Not once. He just did it. Because that's what you do. You carry the weight and you don't hand the receipt to your children.
If you're keeping score with someone right now, your kids, your spouse, your friend, rip up the scorecard. Light it on fire. Keeping score in a relationship is like keeping score in a marriage. The only one who wins is the divorce lawyer.
Number six, secrets. I know a family, I won't say their name, they're still around, where the father revealed in his will that he had another child, another family for decades. The man lived two lives and used his death as the confession booth. You know what that did? It didn't bring closure. It blew a hole in every memory his wife had, every business trip, every late night, every "I'll be home tomorrow." All of it was now suspect. She couldn't mourn him because she didn't know which version of him to mourn.
Secrets are poison. I don't care what kind, financial, personal, whatever. They rot you from the inside. And if you let them out only when you're dead, you've transferred the rot to everyone you left behind. Now, I'm not saying you need to tell everyone everything. That's not wisdom. That's chaos. Some things are between you and God. But if there's a secret that when you die will hurt the people you love, that secret needs to come out now. While you can hold someone's hand. While you can answer questions. While you can take the hit instead of making them take it when you're not there to absorb any of it.
I say this to you with love. What are you hiding? And who will it hurt when it comes out without you there to explain?
Number seven, your wishes for your funeral and nothing about your life. People put 12 paragraphs about whether they want to be buried or cremated, what songs to play, what flowers, what kind of wood for the casket, oak, not pine, for the love of God. And they don't put a single word about what their life meant to them.
Here's what I want you to do. Forget the will for a second. Sit down tonight. Tonight, not next month, and write a letter. Not about your money, not about your stuff, about your life, what you're proud of, what you wish you'd done, what you learned, what you want the people you love to know about how you see them.
My Gloria, my second wife, that woman, she was something. She left notes, not in a will, in books, in jacket pockets, in the sugar jar, if you can believe that. I found one in my winter coat three months after she passed. January, cold as anything. I put my hands in my pockets looking for gloves and I pulled out a folded piece of paper. Her handwriting, which was terrible, like a doctor's. It said, "S, you're going to find this when it's cold. Wear a scarf. I'm not there to yell at you about it. I love you. G." I stood on Third Avenue and cried like I was 5 years old. Not from sadness, from being known, from being loved by someone who thought ahead to a January she wouldn't see just to make sure I was warm. That note was worth more than any inheritance.
You can leave money. You can leave property. But a note that says, "I saw you. I knew you. I love the specific, particular, irreplaceable you." That's what people carry. Write it tonight. Put it in their coat. Put it in their book. Put it in the glove compartment. Don't wait for the will.
Number eight. And this one's the big one. The one I save for last. Don't put "I love you" in your will if you never said it while you were alive, because it doesn't count. It counts as a sentence on a piece of paper, sure, but it doesn't count the way it counts when you say it to someone's face, when you can see their eyes change, when they can hear your voice crack, when they can feel your hand on their shoulder.
I was not a perfect man. I was stubborn and I was scared and I worked too much and I grieved too long and I... there were years, whole years where I was standing right next to my kids but I was a thousand miles away in my head. I know that. But the one thing, the one thing I got right eventually was saying it. Saying the words, "I love you." I say I love you to Lucia every Sunday on the phone. I say it to my grandchildren when they visit. I said it to Gloria every morning for 33 years. Even the mornings we were arguing about stupid things, because an argument doesn't cancel love. An argument is just weather. Love is the climate.
And I need you. You right now, whoever you are, wherever you are. I'm 106 years old and my time is almost up, but yours isn't. Yours isn't. So, I need you to say it. Not in a text, not in an emoji. Open your mouth and say the words to the person who needs to hear them. Because a will is just paper. Your voice. Your voice is the thing they'll remember when you're gone. The sound of you saying their name and then those three words. That's the inheritance that matters. That's the thing no lawyer can distribute and no court can contest and no fire can burn down.
I know because I've lost everything. My mother when I was five, my first wife when I was 31, my shop, my friends, whole decades of people. And what I kept, what I still have, what I carry with me every single morning when I get up and make my coffee in the same pot I've had for almost a hundred years. It's voices. My mother's voice teaching me to tie my shoes. Anamaria singing. Gloria humming in the kitchen. My father's hands on mine, guiding the needle through leather, not saying a word, but the silence was a kind of love, too.
Don't save the important stuff for the will. The will is for the stuff. The stuff is for now. Go call them. Tell them today. And if you're sitting there thinking, "They already know how I feel." They don't. Not enough. Never enough. Say it again. Say it one more time. What's it going to cost you? 30 seconds. Your pride.
I'm 106. I've got maybe a year left, maybe a month, maybe tomorrow's the day. And I am telling you with everything I have. The only thing I've never regretted saying is "I love you." Not once. Every single other thing. The arguments, the business decisions, the words I said in anger, I regret plenty of those. But "I love you." Never. Not once in 106 years. So don't put it in your will. Put it in the air between you and the person who needs to hear it right now while your mouth still works, while their ears still work, while there's still time. Because there is right now, there's still time. But I promise you this, someday there won't be.