Reverse Mortgages - Up Bugaboo Creek on Fridays with the Bertuccis
The nameless faces silently cry out from the wall on which they hang as chain restaurant decor. Little did they know when they put on their Sunday best 100 years ago, their images would be part of retro patina in a cookie cutter beer and rib joint chain.
Certainly, the subjects of these photos must have thought these photos would be part of the family's treasures passed down through generations. Instead, the stiffly-posed ancestors, captured in fuzzy black and white are examined not by their descendants, but by bored strangers waiting for tables. Seeing family photos become nothing more than a parody of times gone by in a restaurant airs the hole in some lost family's core. It is not unlike how some reverse mortgage borrowers see the lost patrimony of the family homestead when it is encumbered by a reverse mortgage. The interest accruing each day to them is like a slow burning fire destroying the hard earned victories of past generations. What is the justification for mining the last asset held by so many elders?
For one, most Americans come from immigrant stock. Our ancestors fought to come to America, fought to survive in a strange new land and instilled in their children lessons only learned through deprivation. I believe most of our ancestors would understand and approve of reverse mortgages. Reverse mortgages are tools of survival. Reverse mortgages, despite the consumption of stored capital, allow elders to maintain their homes and to live in dignity when faced with the economic realities of aging in modern America.
