Kris with a K was the organised one. When she received her diagnosis, she didn’t unravel. She didn’t panic or collapse into fear. She went into administration mode –  the way some people do when emotions are too large to hold all at once. Appointments were logged, files created, contacts notified, and, quietly and deliberately, she wrote her will. Two houses. Savings. Investments. All of these….and one decision that surprised others but felt obvious to her. She left half a million pounds to Brioche. She did not do so because Brioche needed rescuing or because she was being dramatic, but because, for over forty years, their lives had been entwined, parallel, but braided.

They had raised children side by side, buried parents within months of each other, shared holidays, rituals, and inside jokes no one else fully understood. When one woman’s life tilted, the other instinctively leaned.

So when cancer arrived, it didn’t feel individual. It felt shared. Weeks later, Brioche received her diagnosis. Different cancer. Different prognosis. Same quiet terror.

Kris with a K was unsettled—not only by the illness but also by the timing. The symmetry. The strange choreography of it all. She had prepared for death. Brioche had not. It was Brioche who told her to amend the will. This was not born out of modesty, but of realism. They could not determine what cancer would do with them. They could not predict who would go first, if either went at all. They could not negotiate with destiny. They could only do what was required. Hope.

They prayed. They did chemo. They endured physiotherapy. They learned medical language that they never wanted to speak fluently. Then they waited.

Brioche died first. She died intestate. What made it immeasurably harder was the fact that Brioche was in the middle of a deeply painful divorce, one that had already drained her emotionally, financially, and spiritually. It had not reached a resolution, and so it left assets contested, decisions suspended, and wounds still open. Her death did not bring clarity. It brought complications. Grief became tangled with paperwork. Love collided with legal process. The absence of a will didn’t just freeze accounts; it froze closure.

As fate would have it, at that point, Kris with a K survived. She went into remission.

She was alive but altered. Her sister eventually sat her down. Not harshly or with accusation, just with concern.

“You’ve seen what happens,” she said gently.
“Dying intestate doesn’t just leave sadness. It leaves people stranded.”

Kris with a K listened. She understood. Intellectually, she knew what was required.

This is where the story stops giving answers, because what happens next is the part no one talks about. What do you do when you prepared to die — and didn’t — but the person you prepared for did? What do you do when survival feels unearned? When living feels like an administrative error? When writing a will feels like choosing a future you’re not sure you want to inhabit?

Did Kris with a K rewrite everything? Did she honour her original intentions? Did she change it all? Did she leave behind order or questions?

I don’t know, and maybe that’s the point.

We like stories that resolve cleanly, stories that reward preparation, stories that tie faith to outcome. However, real life doesn’t always offer symmetry.

Sometimes, the people who plan carefully are the ones left behind with impossible decisions. Sometimes love complicates logic. Sometimes grief delays what survival demands.

This isn’t a story about money. It’s a story about unfinished business. It’s a story about how pain can stall action, and about how faith and administration don’t always move at the same speed. It’s also about how avoidance isn’t always laziness – sometimes it’s sorrow with no language yet.

The #Unshakable truth is this:
Avoiding the decision doesn’t protect you from pain; it only passes the burden on.

Love without preparation is not kindness. Silence is not neutrality, and unfinished things don’t stay neutral; they become heavy in other people’s hands.

We ask people how they want to live. We rarely ask how they are prepared to leave.

And maybe another #Unshakable truth is this:
Some things remain unfinished not because we forgot, but because finishing them would mean accepting a reality we’re not ready to name.

See you next week.

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IG Handle: @unshakable.is.a.state.of.mind