END OF LIFE DECISIONS

You go through your whole life taking for granted the things that seem to occur everyday: your health, your family, maybe your job. Friends come and go and so do enemies. You go through the days one by one and say such things as: I can’t wait to be a teenager, or I can[t wait for Friday or the next vacation.

Then one day something happens and you realize it is getting late! You need more time, more time to live, to take in the experience of life more slowly. A friend dies, maybe a child moves away, or a parent falls and needs help.

Mom is 94 years old. I visit her everyday and see how she is progressing. We all are hoping for her to leave the nursing home and go home to her own world once again. But we realize her world is now shattered, not the same anymore. Since Mom fell, her children are taking over slowly a little at a time.  It is killing her that if she goes home, she will need some assistance at night, she is very fragile and needs help. Her mind is sharp and responds with the same expressions both physically and verbally.

The hard part of being her child now is telling her she can’t do what she would like to do, that because of her physical limitations, her children are creating rules for her for her own good. My sister Joanne took on the task of telling her she needed to pre-plan her own funeral, and why. I started the process days ago and she was upset with the thought, but said that when she got home she would consider it. It was her way of saying: get lost.

So I went to the funeral parlor and spoke to one of the directors. A very young man with many years ahead of him, who worked with what we wanted to do, my sister Joanne and I. I was a tough job but we did it. We had to go back to the nursing home and tell mom how much it costs and what we did.

Mom was sitting up in a wheel chair, eating lunch that Henry, her boy toy brought her, and as she was biting into his grilled cheese sandwich, I laid the price down on her. Her eyes squinted and a face I never saw before was made. To relive the tension, I mentioned the juggling act she was also providing along with a some clowns that will climb out of a very small car. She started to smile, and didn’t say anything. I found there are tow ways to break news to Mom: one is to tell her straight out and stand back, or with humor. Humor works best, standing back doesn’t always work best because she does have a good reach with a wooden spoon.

And so a very distasteful job is complete, she didn’t ask for the details and I won’t offer unless she does. I have ‘Power of Attorney’ but make her sign the check to the ‘Pre Plan’ as they now call it in the state of New York.

So soon Medicaid will rear its ugly head and we want to be above board, transparent and honest, we will do what we need to do for her sake, and her sake only. All her money will be spent on her, in her final years no matter how long that is.

My sisters all agree with that, so I am proud of them for doing so.