My husband Tim has always joked that any time that you live past age 65 is “bonus time” and you should be extra grateful for it. I try to be extra grateful for all of the time I have been given, but as I approach 65 this summer, it has been a time to pause and reflect.
In the last few years, I have watched many people close to me grow old and pass on. A few weeks ago, I attended the 95th birthday party of a neighbor. I have seen how family members have handled their estates and how their final moments have played out. I have watched the final episodes of “This Is Us”.
It is interesting that something like your will and the way you leave things can change the way you are seen by those that you leave behind. That may seem shallow or petty, but I don’t mean it that way. Hear me out.
It really has nothing to do with money or how much or how little you leave to any one individual. It is more about the respect that you show for the people that you leave behind or the trouble you leave for the people you supposedly cared about.
One of our family members left things in such good order that it made me grow a whole new respect for her. She was not necessarily a neat or meticulous person in life, but she left things so fair, so well thought out and planned that I cannot help but feel an even greater sense of sentimentality for the few things I have of hers. It makes me smile when I see the pin she wore or the chairs she sat in, knowing that she cared enough about us to make her loss emotional of course but not a maddening legal mess to have to wade through.
Another family member thought they were leaving things handled, but as they were in life, they selfishly made it murky, hurtful and incomplete. It was expensive for others who were put in awkward positions. It could have been handled so much neater and kinder for the same effort and the same cost.
Seeing how the people who are 25 to 30 years into bonus time are often treated, paraded out for a party that they are not comfortable with or even cognitive of, or talked down to or made fun of when they can still comprehend some of the things around them, caused me to do what I always do -speak frankly and seriously with my child.
I guess I have always been too quick to have deep conversations with my son. He has always been so smart, so thoughtful, so full of common-sense ideas and intelligent suggestions that from a young age we have been able to have heart to heart talks that were probably beyond what most people have with their children.
As an adult, my son is an excellent writer, a good verbal communicator, an empathetic listener and still has phenomenal common sense- I guess our talks didn’t ruin him! He likes to think of himself as a problem solver and in his career, he is everyone’s “go to” guy. He is definitely my go to!
All that said, I think we all need to have someone who is younger than us- hopefully our child, but if not then someone that we can talk to about how we want the later part of our life handled. I think that before we get too old and feeble to handle things, we need to be thoughtful enough of our family to make provisions for what we want those last years to look like.
I also think that too often we make those plans thinking about ourselves and not what those “plans” might do to our family members. Our old age is not a time to ruin our children’s personal lives or bankrupt ourselves or others. In making those plans, I implore you to think WAY down the road since you have no idea whether your bonus time will be 30 minutes or 30 years. Be realistic and reasonable, as your life ends don’t take your kids down with you!
I guess I need to say spoiler alert, but in a scene from This Is Us, the mom, who has the beginning stages of dementia (something it seems we will all suffer to some degree if we live long enough) makes it clear she doesn’t want her children to diminish their lives in order to take care of her. Of all of the scenes that were written to illicit an emotional response, that one hit me the hardest. Because I have watched my friends, my family members do just that- diminish their own life to take care of an aging parent who made selfish decisions that made their child feel they had to destroy themselves to honor their parent’s wishes.
I hope that I have the grace and the compassion to go out generously. I have had the hard talks with my son and told him what I want from him and from the end of my life. I have tried to plan ahead so that when I go, there are not that many decisions placed on him so that he can grieve me with love and fond memories, not legal fights or overwhelming red tape. Of course, plans can go awry, but I want him to know I tried.
I applied to and was accepted to law school because of these very issues. I ended up not going because my mom died before I could start, and I lost my main “client”. I wanted to be able to help her and other family members to get things in order for those they left behind. Although I have thought about applying again, I have just lost the drive to attend school for 4 more years. However, I still truly believe in taking the time to talk to your family about what you want and taking the steps to make it as simple for them when the time comes.
I have no intention of wasting whatever bonus time I get, and I hope there is a A LOT of it! I am grateful to get to this age and I plan to keep creating, keep enjoying, keep living for as long as I can. But realistically, none of us know how much time we have, so today is a good day to think through how you want to be remembered, who you want to make decisions for you and how you want your life to affect others. It is not a fun conversation, although as usual my son and I laughed a lot when we had our talk. (I can be rather irreverent!)
Once you have that talk, once you take the steps to make your plans, then you can forget it and go! Travel, create, enjoy as long as you can, because you will know that you have taken care of things for when you can’t.
