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PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
husband’s family, where seven kids decide about his mother’s care. I was the only one who could make all the decisions. But making all the decisions is very hard, and it is very lonely.
My parents were fortunate to have tremendous friends in their hometown. They had friends who would help them and visit them. Their friends did so much for them, and I am eternally grateful. For the last four years of my dad’s life, he lived in a beautiful residential living facility. The owners treated him like family. I would have preferred that he be
in the Cities, but he wanted to be in his hometown, where he had lived his entire life. His friends visited him and took good care of him.
I was lucky to have good friends to lean on. I have cousins and sisters-in-law who helped me make decisions about
the care of my parents. My law partners helped me with medical decisions and the decisions about selling the house. I leaned on all of them, and I’m very grateful for the help.
Don’t be afraid to lean on your FDCC friends as well.
When the only lawyer you know where your parents live is representing the other party to your transaction, it is nice to be able to lean on your FDCC contacts for legal advice. I do not practice real estate or trust and estates. While perhaps our FDCC members don’t practice in those areas generally, most of them likely have lawyers in their firms who do. Find the FDCC member in the state you need. They likely have partners who specialize in where you need help.
Conclusion
For those who have not read
it, I would recommend the book “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande. The author provides some interesting insights and thoughts on aging.
My mother passed away on
January 15, 2010, at 92. She had been a math and physics major in college when women, to the extent they went to
college, certainly did not major in mathematics and physics. Before my dad passed away, he established a scholarship for high school students in her name.
My dad passed away on August 18, 2019, at age 97. He had only been sick a week. He and his twin brother were born on the family farm on February 22, 1922. A doctor had braved a blizzard by horse and buggy to attend to the twins’ birth. He was sick for less than a week, and he and his twin brother died ten days apart.
I honestly thought that my dad would live to age 100 in 2022 and that I would be contacting Al Roker to get his picture put on a Smucker’s jar for the Today show. When he suddenly became ill in 2019, I was shocked. He had pulled through serious illnesses before, and I thought he would pull through this one. But it was not to be.
Making difficult decisions for your parents is not easy. I had to sign DNR orders for both of my parents. I took my mother to the nephrologist when he told her he would not agree to dialysis because her condition was too dire and recommended hospice instead.
I signed the DNR order for my dad when it became apparent that he wouldn’t recover, and he slipped into a coma. Those are hard days. But you need to be present.
We do the best we can and always wonder if it was enough.
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Stacy Broman is Managing Partner of Meagher + Geer in Minneapolis, MN. Contact her at: sbroman@meagher.com.