Have you written your will already? 

On November 24, 2022, I lost a dear friend whose details I won’t divulge in this piece for adjudication purposes.

But the short and long of it is that currently, his body is still under the custody of the Uganda Police Force as we await a court ruling on who should have the final say on where my friend must be buried.

All this legal conundrum would have been avoided if my dear friend had left behind a clear will. Therefore, it pains me immensely that as I continue to grieve, I can’t help but use the death of my dear friend as a cautionary tale on the often scary and sensitive topic of writing a will.

There is this tendency among many Africans to have a serious aversion that borders on phobia and abomination to talk about their own death, or even consider what might happen to their remains, estates, and other personal belongings in the event of sudden death.

We are happy to talk about other people’s deaths. But any talk of our own death or the death of those closest to us tends to be equated to some kind of wizardry.

Secondly, some people seem to just underestimate the value of the things they own that they feel those belongings do not warrant a will. What some people forget even if all they own are personal things such as clothes and shoes, there will still be tough questions among relatives as to what they are to do with those seemingly minor belongings.

Although the unwillingness to take the writing of a will seriously cuts across both genders, there is something about men’s friendships that I can’t precisely point a finger at. A man will tell you he has a close friend. But a closer look at the nature of conversations reveals that perhaps, most men don’t differentiate between friends and colleagues, peers, or mere acquaintances.

I have learnt that the most awkward position in the process of grieving a close friend is to be asked some details about what the deceased’s wishes could be. Yet you are equally as ignorant as anyone else. People then start wondering what kind of friendship you two shared.

Men will meet on a regular basis at their favourite drinking joints to discuss everything from who will win the English Premier League, whether the National Unity Platform (NUP) is a genuine opposition party, whether General Salim Saleh is the de facto vice president of Uganda and whether President Museveni has multiple undisclosed children.

Yet, they never create the time to discuss important personal topics such as undisclosed bank accounts, undisclosed children, and undisclosed extramarital partners. They will never mention who must take what when they die and, most importantly, they forget to talk about their own wills in the event of an accidental or sudden death.

Eventually, in the event of sudden death, the undisclosed properties end up as personal properties of caretakers, unending fights ensue regarding who takes what from the known properties, (some fights lead to further deaths or significant bodily injury), creating jobs for lawyers, wastage of valuable time in court to resolve matters that otherwise would have been resolved by simply writing a will.

The banks then confiscate the unclaimed funds from dormant accounts and hand them over to the central bank, yet the deceased has several desperate dependants. The whole funeral process then becomes a mockery or some kind of drama due to the excitement and anxieties generated by the fresh revelations of the deceased’s well-kept secrets.

Dear reader, the love and care you show to your loved ones needs to transcend your own life. And there is no sure way to transcend that love than writing a will. I acknowledge the uneasiness associated with talking to someone about writing a will. For instance, one will wonder and ask: Do I look that sick?

Do I look like I am about to die? Why are you so keen on my will? Is it you that has been bewitching me all along?

However, we must create a culture where we normalise discussions about writing a will. We must make it clear to people that when we talk to them about writing wills, we have no personal interests, and we don’t even care about the contents of the will. What matters is that one has written a will.

Considering that there is power in asking questions, you will have played your part by just asking: have you written your will already?

And, in case you have any doubts about the power of questions, try asking a man if he is sure that all his children were fathered by him.

ssellwanga@gmail.com

The writer is a social worker