The last Friday in February was supposed to be a victory lap for a winter well-spent. It was a rare 65°F gift from the Illinois sky. The kind of afternoon where the sun feels like a promise of the spring to come.
My husband, Scott, and our youngest son, Jacob, spent the afternoon moving cattle between sites. It’s a project that usually takes three or four hours, and as any farmer knows, the cattle rarely cooperate. But Jacob did. He was right there, shoulder-to-shoulder with his dad. Our oldest son, Tyler, was home from college for the weekend, helping on the dairy with cattle work. It was one of those perfect, productive days where everyone was basking in the sunshine, the rhythm of the farm moving in a steady, beautiful cadence.
When the clock hit 5:00 p.m., Scott was ready to call it a day. Our local high school boys’ basketball team had made it to regionals, and we wanted to be there to cheer them on. We climbed into our SUV, chatting about the chores we’d finished and enjoying the lingering warmth of the day.
We were only a mile from our farm when the world shattered.
It happened in a blink. A truck made a mad dash across the four-lane highway, blindsiding us. There was no time to swerve, no time to brake. The police report would later confirm what we already knew: there was nothing we could have done.
Everyone tells you that life can change in a split second, but until you are sitting in the wreckage of mangled steel, surrounded by a dozen deployed airbags and the smell of gunpowder and dust, you don’t truly understand it. As we hit, I felt the impact vibrate through my very bones. I immediately started to pray. “We will be okay. God, make us okay.”
Through the haze of smoke and shock, Scott’s voice was the only thing I could hear. He was a trooper, his own safety forgotten.
“Karen, are you okay?” he asked, over and over.
I wanted to scream that I was fine. I wanted to tell him I was right there. But the shock was a physical weight. My mouth opened, a moan escaped, but the words were trapped behind a wall of trauma. I couldn’t speak.
The rest of the evening was a blur of sirens, flashing lights and the sterile white walls of the ER. The ambulance took me away; the tow truck took what was left of our vehicle. We spent the night under fluorescent lights, but we walked away. We got to go home.
In the days that followed, a deep, heavy appreciation for life settled over our house. I am thankful to be writing this story, though I would give anything to have never lived it. But the most emotional moment didn’t happen at the crash site; it happened at our farm.
Our children asked the question every farm kid fears: “What would happen if both of you had passed?”
I cried. But for the first time, I could answer them with certainty. I told them about the will. I told them it was all outlined, all documented. It took me losing both of my parents and my brother — and writing about other families’ succession plans gone wrong for years — before we finally sat down and finalized our own a decade ago.
I think back to my own parents. It took them losing their own son — my brother — in an automobile accident to finally lean forward and be brave enough to talk about their own will. They put a plan together soon after and revised it a few times over the years. When the time came that we eventually lost our parents, my sisters and I were so incredibly thankful we did not have to worry about the logistics during our grief. My parents had it all documented. They gave us that peace of mind.
Farmers, I am pleading with you: Don’t push pause.
Don’t wait for a sunny day to have the conversation. Or a rain day. The highway doesn’t care about your schedule. Don’t wait because it’s an uncomfortable conversation; it will never get easier. Don’t wait because you aren’t sure what is “fair” or what is “best.”
Start the conversation today. Meet with a lawyer. Get it documented. You can always change and revise it — we already have once since we started.
I am so incredibly thankful that today, my kids are out in the dirt helping on the farm instead of sitting in a lawyer’s office reading a will. I am thankful they didn’t lose their parents on an Illinois highway. But mostly, I am thankful that if the worst had happened, they wouldn’t have been left in the dark.
Don’t wait. Your legacy is too important to leave to chance.
