055 - Hey boomer! We're dying!
We can tell people we love them by helping them anticipate details.
Welcome back! (Or welcome!)
I wanted to write something to my generation. I was prepared to be sarcastic.
“Hey Boomer! Tell your kids that you are going to die so they know what to do when it happens. Because we are dying.”
But it’s not an overstatement or a sarcastic comment. It’s true. I work in a hospital. I talk to families before and after death as they are making decisions about choices of care, first for the patient, then for the body.
I’m seeing people my age who are patients. Which means that the families are the age of my wife, the age of our kids. And often, I hear, “I don’t know what to do. He never talked about it. She was so private.”
The person my age who is the patient didn’t acknowledge, at least on the outside of her head, his head, the possibility of death.
It may be because as boomers, we’ve avoided getting old, we’ve thought death was for old people, we’ve been too busy caring for our parents and kids, we’ve been anticipating retirement, we’re too young to die.
I understand. It’s hard to be the “old people”. But we are. And, at current death rates, someone, someday, for sure, is going to need to make end of life decision on our behalf.
I know that our temptation is to say, “just cremate me and toss me in the river.” We don’t want a big deal (except for those of you who do.)
And there are several decisions that may need to be made between death and the river.
So I’d like to suggest a quick set of questions for you write down somewhere (and share).
1. Who is your next of kin?
That’s who will make the decisions.
In Indiana, by statute, the order is spouse, adult children, parents, adult sibling, grandparents, adult grandchildren, an adult who knows you well and knows your wishes. And it happens in that order. (And if there is more than one child, it may be a vote). If you’ve been together a long time, but you aren’t married, and there isn’t paperwork, this is the hierarchy. If you are apart, but still legally married, this is the hierarchy. If people on this list don’t like you, this is the hierarchy.
And if you haven’t talked for years, chaplains and coroners are still pretty good at finding connections.
Don’t like that?
Then either sort things out or appoint a healthcare representative. It’s a simple form in Indiana (and other states.) (Here's a story about choosing.)
And make sure this name is in your hospital chart, your wallet, your phone, their pocket.
2. What do you want them to do? What are your directions about your healthcare?
In a sudden serious hospitalization, a doctor will sit with your next-of-kin and say, “Did they ever tell you what they would want at life or death. Would they want CPR? Would they want a ventilator? Would they want us to do everything we can?”
And your next-of-kin will need to know the answer.
There are lots of strong opinions. “I don’t want to be a vegetable.” “I don’t want to be on a ventilator.” “Do everything possible.” These opinions are based on television, on what happened to a relative somewhere, on what you read somewhere.
But because we have a few minutes now, I’d like you to think with me.
When we lead those conversations, we often ask the question, “What would make a good day?” Be honest but acknowledge to yourself what factors someone could use to make that decision.
Understand that a ventilator is used to help you breath so your body can heal. It’s training wheels more than treatment. And allowing people to use it can be a good thing.
“Everything possible” (such as doing compressions for 45 minutes) can leave a body broken. And a brain without oxygen for that long is in trouble.
Sometime I’ll talk to you about palliative care and about hospice care and about comfort care and about “pulling the plug” which doesn’t look like that at all, but not today.
For now, have a conversation.
3. What do you want them to do about organ donation?
In Indiana, and I'm guessing in many other states, within an hour of your death, someone will call your next-of-kin and talk about tissue, bone, and organ donation. Help your NoK out by talking with them about it.
4. What do you want them to do with your body?
Do you want burial or cremation, or don’t you care? Do you want donation to science? (Then start the process now. It takes some time and not everyone is accepted).
5. If it were up to you (and it’s not) how do you want them to gather to remember you?
I tell families regularly, “I know what your loved one said about not having a big funeral, but you need to get together to eat and tell stories, at the very least.” Give them permission to do what they feel is best for them.
Recently, I talked with a family. Their loved one didn’t want a funeral or viewing or anything. The family member said, “That’s fine. We’ll honor that. But we’ll do what we need, which is to get together and tell stories.”
6. I just said that it’s not up to you. If you want it to be up to you, make pre-paid arrangements with a funeral home.
I don't know the process. And I’ve chosen to not research that. But the possibility exists and may make things easier for your family at a time when they aren't thinking clearly
7. At the very least, know and suggest a reputable funeral home.
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This list is a conversation starter, not a comprehensive outline of all the ways to prepare ourselves and our families for our eventual, but certain death. I wrote this list a couple years ago but didn’t share it very well. This week and last, I’ve had several conversations which would have been helped if a boomer had decided to take some of these steps.
And this is just about the healthcare side. And I’m not an attorney. Taking care of passwords and durable powers of attorney (as opposed to healthcare) and wills and all that stuff is beyond my scope here, but still necessary.
The more we can talk through, the less chaos we introduce to the lives of others as we leave ours.
Because, after all, boomer, we're dying.
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The Art of Dying: Living Fully Into The Life To Come
Rob Moll. Intervarsity Press, 2010. Afterword by Clarissa Moll, 2021.
Since all of us will encounter death, this text is a clear explanation. It's told from the perspective of books written in the middle ages that were intended to help people die well.
Rob Moll was a journalist for Christianity Today. He started writing this book, as he says, "at a time when end-of-life ethics was being hotly debated in the press." There were conversations, court cases, and demonstrations about what kinds of care were ethically, morally, medically appropriate when someone was in a persistent vegetative state.
Moll writes, "I was unsatisfied with Christian responses that either requires the prolonging of life—no matter the physical, mental, relational, or financial suffering involved—or that pinpointed what treatments might be appropriate under what circumstances. Instead, I wanted to find a Christian response that would be useful under any medical circumstance, that upheld the value of life and the dignity of the person. What I discovered was the Christian tradition of the good death."
To research the book, he worked as a hospice volunteer and overnight at a funeral home. He interviewed and cared, he saw death and life. And he wrote this book.
And then, in 2019, he fell off a cliff and died.
His wife, Clarissa, who had edited the book, wrote an afterword for it two years after he died.
I thought about including her book about grief. I decided that we needed this book about death.
It's a helpful book in identifying the core questions about dying and Christian death. Though other books dig deeper into some of the topics, this book gives us an overview to understand the questions.
Both of my parents were cared for by the funeral home he worked at, though not while he was there. It is a good funeral home.
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There wasn’t a podcast episode this morning.
I’ve been creating a preaching course, a small consulting project, a presentation about God and pain, and a couple other things the last two weeks. I’ll be back to that next week.
But you can catch up:
Finding Words in Hard Times - the podcast on YouTube.
Finding Words in Hard Times - the podcast on Apple
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Thanks for stopping by.
See you next week.
Jon