Sunday Scribblings’ theme is “instructions.”

Along with a key to my parents’ townhouse, my father gave me instructions for using it in the most important emergency.

Upon learning that my parents had died, I should get in my car, drive to the townhouse and carry out as many expensive antiques or pieces of art as possible. They had some nice pieces: a marble-topped bombe’ chest with gold curlicues, a Chinese handkerchief table, a pink quartz Mandarin duck lamp. Dad was worried that the IRS would appraise his valuables for a lot of money, forcing my brother and me to pay estate taxes. It would be better if the IRS didn’t learn about them.

“I’m not going to do that,” I said, reckoning that estate taxes would be the least of my problems if my parents died.

My parents still owned that house when my mother died. By the time my father’s turn came, he’d moved to Florida and we no longer spoke.