The Inventory

Sam Becker was knee-deep in preparing an inventory of his personal assets. It had turned out to be a much bigger job than he and his wife, Claire, had anticipated. Neither of them realized how many things they actually owned.

"Please tell me again why we are doing this," Claire said to him.

"For insurance purposes. We have to have a list of the things in the house and we photograph the rooms and the more valuable things as proof that they actually exist," he answered.

She frowned. "We have a lot of stuff."

He agreed. "This is such a pain in the rear to have to do this. Oh well, let's just keep going until we reach a breaking point. We are not going to finish this tonight."

Claire looked at her watch, "Kiddo, it is 10:30. I have reached a breaking point. I am going to bed. I have to go to work tomorrow."

He frowned a little. "Okay. I am going to try to get a little bit more done tonight. I'll be up soon."

"Suit yourself. Just don't stay up too late. You have to go to work to in the AM," she told him. "Good night, dear."

"Good night, Claire."

Sam returned to the china hutch to inventory it's contents. After he had finished that, he set the clipboard down on the dining room table and walked over to the couch. H was bone tired. They had been working for hours and had only gotten about half-way through the inventory. And even after they had compiled the list of possessions, they still had to assign a dollar value to each of the items in the list. This is such a pain, he thought again to himself.

He rose from the couch and walked over to the window that looked out on the front yard and the street in front of their house. He sighed. A lot of things were going through his mind tonight in addition to this inventory. His 60th birthday was coming up soon and he had been thinking a lot about what to make of the his life so far. "Is this what it all comes down to?" he asked
himself. "The true measure of Sam Becker, the man, is that he now owns a house, two cars, a big screen tv... " He paused. "No, no, no... that doesn't work for me."

Suddenly, he got an inspiration and walked through the living room and into the entry way. He opened the door to his study and went to his desk. He sat down and opened the bottom right drawer and took out 3 or 4 sheets of clean, white paper and placed the paper directly in front of him on the desk. He picked up the pen on his desk.

At the top of the first sheet of paper, centered, he wrote: One Life. Just below that, also centered, he wrote: An Inventory of Intangible Assets. If Sam was nothing else, he was a businessman. He created two columns beneath that by putting the column title, Item, on the left side of the page. and over to the right another heading: Value Assigned.

He started listing those things which he considered his intangible assets. He entered under Item, "Good Health". "That I got," he said to himself. For the next item, he wrote down "Self-Confidence." He knew that without that, he would not have been such a success in the business world. "Chutzpah I got. That's for sure."

He paused and decided to create a sub-heading under Items. He wrote just below the last entry: My Family. First item under that heading: Claire. Such a gem. Centered. Kind. Loving. His best friend and partner in life. He was indeed a fortunate man to have married her.

Second item, subsection Family: My kids. Two of the great joys of my life. "I have been able to watch my two girls grow tall and healthy. And now they are grown with significant others of their own. I couldn't be more proud of them." No matter how demanding the professional side of his life had been, he had always made sure that there was time left over to be with his girls as they grew up. Having two wonderful children had given him great purpose during the years during which they were growing up. He knew how easy it was to get lost in one's own life, without something or someone to focus on. He had seen it happen to so many or his business associates.

He decided he needed a separate section for his good friends. It wouldn't be an enormous list. One has many acquaintances in life, but only a few really good, true friends. So he entered the next sub-heading to the list: Friends.

Sam laid his pen down for moment. He smiled at his memories of Frank Irwin, his best friend for the last thirty years. Frank had just passed away a few months ago. Immediately after his death, Sam had been truly lost for a few weeks. Frank and Sam had survived the bad times together and together had made the good times truly memorable. The two of them and their spouses had taken vacations together and the four of them had gone on that fantastic cruise to Alaska three years ago. He missed Frank terribly. But Sam had such wonderful memories of their friendship and those memories helped to soften the pain of losing Frank.

He picked up his pen and entered the name of Frank Irwin under the heading of Friends.

He reminisced a bit more and in due course added the names of Jimmy Lawrence, his business partner and friend of many years, and Reverend Martin Schoss, who had helped him to get through the death of his parents four years ago. He also added Paul Watson and Larry Green, both of whom had brought great warmth and laughter to his life.

He thought to himself, "What else to I need to add to this list? What have I missed?" He thought a bit and then picked up his pen. A little ways below the Friends section, he penned in the following:
Claire and I have travelled the world, together. There is nothing like seeing the world with a delightful and thoughtful travel companion.

Beneath that entry he wrote: I published a book of poems, which got moderately good reviews.

Once again he paused. "Have I made a difference during my life?" Sam asked himself. He thought about the many people with whom he had interacted throughout his life. "Did I touch their lives and change them for the better in some small way?" he wondered. Sam was known for his kindness. He had generously helped the interns who had worked at his company. He had allotted time to work in charitable causes. The thing was that he never knew if any of the things that he had done had actually made a difference in the outcome for the people he had tried to help. After giving the question some thought, he knew what he would enter into his personal inventory.

He wrote: I made a sincere effort to touch the lives of other people in a positive way.

One line down, he added: I made a point of never speaking ill of others. There isn't much point in doing that.

He laughed to himself. "Hell, I am making myself look like some kind of saint. That I'm not," he said mostly to himself. "I just tried to be a decent sort of guy."

Sam was startled when Claire said, "And that is exactly what you have been, Sam." She had been quietly watching him from the doorway leading to the stairwell. "What is that you are writing, Sam?"

"It is a sort of personal inventory of my life. I want the sum value of my life to be more than what my material goods are worth," he explained.

"Do you mind if I see what you have written down," Claire asked.

"Please. Be my guest." Sam replied.

She crossed the room over to the desk and picked up the several sheets of paper. She read through the list, with great interest. "Sam, you have not put a value by any of the items on this list."

He thought about that for a moment. "Claire, you cannot put a price on things like that. And relationships, they are irreplacable."

Clare looked at the list again. She scanned for something that she thought should be there. "Darling, you missed something."

"And what might that be?" he asked her.

"Allow me, my dear." Claire answered. She reached for the pen on the desk and added one more item on the list.

He watched her with a smile. When she had finished, he reached for the list. At the bottom of the list she had written: Sam Becker is deeply loved by all the people whose lives he has so generously and warmly touched.

For a moment, Sam was a bit overwhelmed. Small tears formed in his eyes. He took Claire in his arms. "Thank you so much, Claire. You always know the right thing to say. I don't know how you do it."

"You earned every bit of that love, my dearest." she told him.

Sam was suddenly very tired. It had been a very long day. Although he had not yet completed the full inventory of the house, he had just finished the most important part of the job.

"Claire, let's go to bed."

She smiled at him with wonderful warmth. "I thought you would never ask, my love."

He turned off the desklamp. The two of them walked towards the open door. He put his arm around Claire's shoulder and closed the door behind him with his free hand.