Dear Judy,
Maybe you get other emails like this, I don’t know. What advice do you have for overcoming the emotional barriers to planning for one’s own demise? Especially when you are feeling healthy and vibrant (even if I do have a few grey hairs…)
I am 44. I find discussing issues relating to my own death with loved ones and spending time planning inordinately hard. I can’t even figure out if I want to be cremated or buried. I know I have to designate medical powers of attorney to family members in writing, and I know I have to talk to my kids about legacies and last wishes.
All these things are necessary I realize. But I keep putting them off.
So how do I find some peace about doing all these things? And a willingness to put them in writing?
Jack
Dear Jack,
I know, I know. It’s really hard to get around to planning for — well planning for non-being, I guess. We have trouble imagining it. And we’re all scared of it.
So that’s what refusing to plan, refusing to commit decisions to writing amounts to: fear of death. Or — wariness of death.
So here’s what I did to get over my own phobias. I thought about my kids and everyone else I’ll leave behind when I’m terminally ill or when I die.
Do I really want my grown kids quarreling about whether or not Mom would want life-sustaining treatments if she’s in a vegetative state? Do I really want some doctor I never met informing my relatives that if I get that extra dose of morphine I’ll become “addicted”?
Do I want my kids, at the worst time of their lives (as I prefer to think of the effect of my death on them…) trying to figure out if I wanted to be cremated with my ashes tossed into a cigar box? Or would I prefer them to plunk down good money for a budget-busting funeral followed by a bronze casket lined with pink satin?
No I don’t. In fact any wrong decision would probably make me haunt the perpetrator for the rest of his life. And how fair is that if I never put anything in writing?
So that’s what made me start making arrangements, filling out Advance Medical Directives, and sorting through options like organ donation. Not thinking about me. But about my offspring and the burden my silence would place on them.
And by the way – thinking about others is a far less frightening way of accomplishing what we all have to do, like it or not.
Thank you for writing
Judy
Try thinking about your loved ones: I find that’s the only way of getting myself to do something I really don’t want to do. For instance, my doctor ordered me to lose a lot of weight, which was too challenging, until my daughter asked if I thought she ought to spend her twenties looking after a bedridden person. Boy, did that get me to the dietician (and the gym) — quicker than you could say “stroke”!
All right, Judy, we’ve already figured out you aren’t into fancy funerals, no need to shove that down our throats every hour on the hour. The man asked your advice on how to approach the issue, not your opinion on caskets and cremation!
I wonder if it’s only these particular issues which Jack has problems with…Maybe it’s part of a pattern of avoiding difficulties (or reality? or bad news?) in general?
Chaz, our spirits survive us but in these wordly bodies, it is only the rarely gifted who can truly sense this, while others fear death, which seems so final. I am among the fortunate who recognise the flow and ebb of cycles, but Jack, like most humans, belongs to the majority for whom fear of the unknown, any unknown, is natural, and he should be respected rather than scorned for these emotions.
There are journals available for just this purpose. Most big name bookstores can probably look one up for you. I received one as a gift, weird, but I do work in the field. It is really a “My Life” journal and allows for entries not only related to the specifics of end of life stuff, but it allows for thoughts related to different subjects such as: best memories, most embarrasing moment, best advice on a host of subjects. I am still working on mine, little by little.