The "120 File"

For the past ten years or so, I’ve maintained what I call my “120 file,” named after the traditional Jewish blessing, usually offered to an older person, “may you live to 120.” The file is meant to help whichever spouse is still vertical to cope with the disability or death of the other. We’ve placed in this file copies of our health proxies, end of life preferences, and wills. In addition we’ve indicated the identity of our bank, brokerage, and credit accounts, the location of our safety deposit keys, and all our bookkeeping and bill paying procedures.

These procedures are my responsibility, and whenever they change, I revise the 120 file accordingly. But recently my beloved brother innocently threw a monkey wrench into my well-oiled machinery, when he introduced me to a computer program that protects one’s passwords. I had long used my boyhood address as the password for our various accounts, even though I knew that it was not a good idea to employ the same password for all accounts, because if a thief obtained it, I’d be in serious trouble.

The computer program to which my brother introduced me, KeePass, is a free, open source password manager which generates long strings of random digits and letters, both upper and lower case, for your passwords and then locks them in one database, which is encrypted with “the best and most secure algorithms” available, according to the program’s website. The program then helps you paste your password into the website you're accessing. All you need to remember is the master password that unlocks the database.

My brother’s description of the program proved irresistible. After I downloaded it, however, I found I couldn't operate it. So I called my brother. Generous and patient as usual, he walked me through the operation of the program, and I was delighted with it once I started to use it. So where was the monkey wrench? Once a year, at about this time, I review all the procedures in our 120 file, and as I did so I realized that my wife would not be able to gain access to our accounts online unless she learned how to operate KeePass.

So the other day, resolute and firm-jawed, I proceeded to transfer my KeePass data base to her computer, but I immediately ran into trouble. Again, my brother rode to the rescue and with patience and tact guided me through a procedure that after twenty-five years of using personal computers I should have mastered by now. What surprised me the other day, while working with my brother, was not my ineptitude but my considerable anxiety.

Why was I so anxious? The embarrassing truth is that I worried that I might pop off before installing the program and database in my wife’s computer and then she’d be unable to access our accounts online. I knew, of course, that this fear was irrational. After all, the chances of my checking out immediately, while not nil, are still pretty small. Besides, we have theater tickets for next week.

After I confessed my fears to my wife, she gently reminded me that she could always telephone the accounts in question and operate the old-fashioned way, checking balances and paying bills with a credit card over the phone, until she sets up her own computerized systems. My wife is an intelligent woman, in fact smarter than I am (she earned a higher degree of honors than I did from the same college). I needn’t fear that my demise will leave her helpless. True, my 120 file will be useful to her when, as is likely, I die first, but it's not essential. My obsession with keeping it up to date reflects, I’m afraid, an effort to control the uncontrollable, an attempt to act beyond the grave. KeePass will manage my passwords and keep them safe, but it won't allow me to operate posthumously. For that, I'll need a different program.