Last Saturday, I sat by my father’s
bedside 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 a 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 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 people 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 my family was 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.
See you in church.
Christy
The Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas, Pastor, Krum
UMC
Questions or comments about this article?
Please contact me at christy@krumumc.org
or phone the church office at 940-482-3482.
