Sorry About Your Loved One. Not.

        Dear Mr., Mrs, Ms., Mrx, Msx etc.:

I have no intention of visiting your grandparent/aunt/uncle/mother/father at [insert name of health care facility] to notarize their signature(s) on their estate documents/deed of trust/power of attorney or any other document that requires the imprint of a notary stamp for legal validation.

I offer two reasons for this blanket declaration, something I never would have made as little as six months ago. 

  The first involves hygiene. Health care facilities at the best of times are incubators of germs and viruses, some of which have yet to be discovered by science and many of which cause incurable diseases. But we are not living in the best of times. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has caused Covid-19 in about 19.4 million people worldwide, killing 700,000 of them. Hospitals and other such petri dishes, notably nursing homes, are prime breeding grounds for and distributors of the virus.  

My second reason is simpler. You want me to risk my health because you lack even a shred of foresight and common sense, qualities that would have prompted you to get the damn paperwork filled out and signed before the ingestion of who knows how many drugs became necessary to enable  your loved one to simply grasp a pen. Your failure to take these simple steps is as dumb and disrespectful to others as not wearing a mask and standing too close together when in public. 

I'm willing to bet you'll find someone with a notary commission willing to toddle over to [insert name of of health care facility] and complete the documents you ignored for so long but now deem so vital. I hope they charge you based on the level of risk they are running. Maybe that will teach you to think. For once.