An Unexpected Scenario That We Weren’t Prepared For

Yesterday morning we get “the call” everyone dreads: a loved one is about to pass away. This time it’s my wife’s grandfather. It’s not like we hadn’t expected this day for some time as he’s been getting worse in his old age for a variety of reasons. Since we had talked about the possibility that my wife would travel to Texas to attend his funeral it wasn’t a shock to me, however, my wife (and her sister and dad, among others) had decided that they would try to make it down to Texas–a 12 hour drive–to see him BEFORE he passed on. This was NOT a part of the plan!

Though I understand her desire to see her grandfather one last time, it threw a loop into my need to prepare and caused me to go into a bit of prepping overdrive, if you will, since she was planning on departing within a hour. And to make matters worse (in my mind, anyway) I wasn’t going with her… you know, protective husband and all. ;) And, it’s not like this was a bug out situation where we could have used our priority checklist. This was something a bit different.

Anyway, since her mind was elsewhere I took it upon myself to do my best to gather anything and everything she would need for her trip, including ensuring she had multiple ways to pay for stuff, different phone chargers (AC and DC), her pills, and even simple things like a pillow, blanket, and something to read. Granted, she probably would have grabbed most of these things herself but I wanted to make sure. I even found that I had to pack a small vehicle emergency kit and a few car-related supplies too.

Point being that I found this experience to be a new scenario we never planned for: an immediate need to travel that isn’t a bug out situation. Come to think of it, this is a more likely scenario that most of us will face, far more likely than any scenario I can think of that would require us to bug out unexpectedly.

FYI, they didn’t make it before he passed away, which is the saddest part of it all. This, however, threw another wrench into the equation because she and her sister were contemplating wanting my brother-in-law and I to attend his funeral, which would not only require us to travel there too but either take our children with us or come up with another plan to deal with them for a few days; this included not only getting them to and from school but their assorted after-school activities as well. Currently, it doesn’t seem like we need to travel to Texas as well but it would have been yet another situation (dealing with our children) that was never planned for. Sure we would have made it all work out, but that’s not really being prepared now, is it?

Obviously, some things simply cannot be planned for and you just have to wing it, I guess. Regardless, I can see myself creating a simple list of items we can/should take if we had to make a fast trip by car or plane for just such a scenario. In a way, this scenario piggy-backs on the recent post I did titled Forget Tomorrow, Have You Prepared for Today? Funny how these topics just seem to show up out of nowhere.

Take care everyone.