On Dying Well
and Leaving a Legacy |
| Last
Saturday, I sat by my father’s beside as he took his last breath
and passed from glory to glory. His death followed a long and very
difficult mental and physical decline. A series of strokes in the
right frontal lobe of his brain had severely impaired his judgment.
Over the last year and in half, he had become more and more disconnected
from his body and less and less able to make rational decisions. The
entire family was pulled into the vortex of his increasingly crazy
thinking patterns and those of us who were the closest to the situation
often found ourselves in despair and frustration as things kept worsening.
|
| I
loved my father. That love did not erase the reality: he did not die
well. Because of this, I was especially grateful that at least his
last 36 hours were peaceful and it gave many some time and space to
offer forgiveness and say goodbye. |
| When
talking with the funeral director as we made the final arrangements,
we both expressed a common wish: to be able to die without going through
these times of extreme decline. And I suppose that is one way of dying
well—for the path to be quick and easy. But most of us will
not have that privilege. |
| Over
the past few years, I have worked with numerous families who have
experienced what my own family has just gone through. What many have
realized is that we really do die poorly in the United States. Just
out of curiosity, I have asked my mother to save all of the hospital/medical/nursing
home bills from the last six months. I have not yet seen the grand
total, but I’m betting that it will be well over $150,000. Is
this really a good use of both government and private funds? I’m
personally wrestling deeply over this. I know that we were fairly
privileged here: a good portion was covered by Medicare and private
insurance. Nonetheless, those are limited resources. And had my father
not died when he did, it would have taken only a few months for my
mother to have gone through a lifetime of savings in order to keep
him in a decent nursing facility. The grief of losing a husband of
62 years was coupled with a real financial terror of facing poverty
for the rest of her own life. |
| Something
is just terribly wrong here. I freely admit I have no solutions. But
as a pastor, I say: we need to address the inevitably of our deaths
with open eyes. |
| One
great gift you can leave your family is to plan for this. Write a
will, decide how you want your life celebrated, and make sure that
someone is appointed to make medical and legal decisions for you in
case you do become incapacitated. None of us likes to think it will
happen to us. But it probably will. |
| But
there is a second and more important gift each of us can give: an
awareness that our lives do not end when we die. Not only is there
life beyond death for us, but there is also the life that is remembered
by family and friends—that is our legacy. We all need to take
stock of who we are and just what kind of legacy we are leaving to
these loved ones. While some may leave a financial legacy, all of
us leave a spiritual legacy. The greatest gift we can give our family
and friends is the gift of being remembered well because we lived
our lives as beacons of hope and the love of God. |
| Christy |
| The
Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas, Pastor, Krum UMC |
| christy@krumumc.org |
| |
