A family can be an awful thing, especially when its members are petty, spiteful, and downright ugly.  Too many times in my adventures have I seen a situation where a parent or grandparent has passed away and the surviving relatives encircle the estate of the deceased like ravenous buzzards.  Right away, sister fights sister, brother battles brother, cousin assaults cousin.  Each tries to outsmart the others to get the biggest piece of the pie, or indeed, escape with the whole thing… pan and all.

Mmm.  Pie… I love pie.  It’s difficult for me to name my favorite.  There’s the good old American stand-by and everyone’s lover, apple pie.  Blueberry pie is also in my top five, but when Thanksgiving nears, I find myself daydreaming and smiling like a moron over pumpkin pie.  So let’s say–for the sake of this argument–that pumpkin pie is the greatest, richest, most upper class pie in the world.  All right?  For the purpose of this discussion, pumpkin is the bourgeoisie of pie.  It has it all: money, jewels, fine art, a trophy wife, and prime real estate.

Moving down the ladder, apple pie would have to be le petite bourgeoisie.  Apple has a good life: it can pay its bills, support a family, take the occasional vacation, and has moderate property and possessions.  Apple is by no means rich like pumpkin, but it is comfortable.  Apple pie is numerous; it is the backbone of pie, and therefore rules the middle class.

This leaves rhubarb pie sulking on the bottom rung.  I hate rhubarb.  It’s sour.  It’s nasty.  And it doesn’t wash.  It comes home drunk every night and sells its food stamps for cigarettes and Busch Beer.  Rhubarb has nothing and will die with nothing.  Rhubarb is the lower class of pie and can’t even pronounce proletariat.

So, after that long metaphor, here’s my point.  When people die, they leave behind pies (a.k.a. an estate and/or stuff and/or garbage).  For every one hundred pies, perhaps ten are pumpkin, maybe twenty are rhubarb, and the remaining seventy are apple.  All these pies, no matter the class, must be served to the surviving relatives, lest they spoil.

Those who wait for their piece of pumpkin are generally civilized.  There are exceptions, but most of the time, the people receiving a slice of the pumpkin have grown up to bake their own pumpkin pie, and so when the auction company comes to dessert and begins selling and slicing, there is no great anxiety and there is no angst afterward when everyone is enjoying coffee.  Because pumpkin pie is so filling, one equal slice is usually enough to satisfy most appetites.

When it comes to rhubarb, no one cares either.  It sucks.  No one liked it before the baker died, and no one wants it after he’s gone and buried.  No one fights over the rhubarb pie, because no auctioneer can find anyone who wants a slice.  So the rhubarb pie usually lies unclaimed, eventually molds, and is taken to the landfill by the slum lord or trailer park owner.

This brings us to apple, the most contended pie of the three.  Where rhubarb is spurned and pumpkin is filling, apple pie usually leaves the receiver wanting more.  The surviving relatives had a taste of the apple while the baker was alive.  Now he’s gone and they want a bigger piece than the rest or–as I said before–they want the whole pie.  Each family member feels he or she deserves more, for each claims a greater stake in helping form and cook the pie.  Others are just gluttons and roam from elder to elder, trying to acquire as many pies as possible, while some are just spiteful, wishing to possess most or all of the apple pie, even if they leave it to rot on the table.  Locks get changed, court dates get set, and the auctioneer is left massaging his ringing ears while telling all that gather at the table that legally only one holds the knife and they must bring their plates to the executor.

The fact is that the majority of estates have $5,000 or less worth of chattel property within them.  And the fact is that the selling price of most real estate falls within the national average or below it.  Garbage is garbage, so I don’t even deal with it.  When it comes to those richer estates, where there is indeed great stuff within the walls, I sell it, hand the family a fat check, and they say, “Thank you.”  It’s those homes that contain every day, middle-of-the-road items where I find executors pulling their hair out over jealous and greedy relatives.  It’s in those apple pie estates that I find the most heartache, headaches, and ass aches.

And I’m exhausted.  I’m sick to death of seeing brothers and sisters kill each other over nothing.  I get tired of seeing the ugly side of people.  It’s so stupid to fight for a few thousand dollars.  It’s so stupid for family members to hate each other over mediocrity.  Hiding behind sentiment and over-exaggerated grief… it becomes a pageant of fools.  For as Shakespeare explained in Macbeth, “[Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

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