Gift your children with your plan
When you drive a car, do you keep your eyes always on the road ahead; or do you occasionally glance in the rear-view mirror and use your peripheral vision to check on what’s happening around you? Being a safe, aware driver includes seeing what’s behind you and around you too.
That’s a workable reminder when considering how your life has played out, and is still playing out. Recently I find myself repeating a self-created mantra: “End-of-life goes so much better if you plan ahead!”
Erik Erikson was a famous psychotherapist in the mid-20th century. The last of the eight psychosocial stages he identified in 1959 is called “Ego Integrity vs. Despair”, and impacts people 65 years and older. This is the time of life when we do some informal (or maybe) formal life review.
In this review, we consider what we’ve accomplished or haven’t accomplished, and seek to integrate those past life experiences into considering who we are now.
If we see our past life as unproductive and generally unsatisfying, we may let ourselves become more depressed.
A more positive past, he says, will lead to “wisdom”, which can help persons look back on their lives with a sense of closure and completeness, and also to accept death without fear. But I have a question: what about those persons whose previous lives are not so easy to identify as “successful”?
“Life Review” is a standard option for persons involved in Hospice work. It gives families a chance to reflect on what they choose to remember. But how do the rest of us review our lives? So here is something you might consider: Sit down with family members — and maybe lots of family pictures to trigger stories — well before some terminal illness draws you together.
Take the time you want --in big chunks or over a longer period of get-together time — and share those memories and stories that make you a family. Or if you have no family nearby, invite a trusted friend or two to walk with you through your life-story. You will all be blessed!
I suspect that some life review moments can be an important part of what Geezer Forum participants might hear next Tuesday, March 14, from Dr. Foster Cline. Foster has put together a helpful estate planning process to show his own family how Foster and his wife have ordered their “later years”.
In Foster’s own words: “It is daunting for us to keep track of all this information. Let alone the mess we can leave to our loved ones after passing! Having this information digitalized, easily updated and available to heirs is one of the best presents we can give our beneficiaries.”
Whatever the size of your estate, I think Dr. Cline’s approach will help you and your family open conversations about important tasks and important relationships that you are all a part of. “The Best Possible Digital Gift to Our Children” will be on March 14 at Columbia Bank’s Community Room, 2:30-4 p.m. Hope you can join us.
Paul Graves, M.Div., is Lead Geezer-in-Training for Elder Advocates, a consulting ministry on aging issues. Contact Paul at 208-610-4971 or elderadvocates@nctv.com.