Monthly Archives: March 2011

Why is “I love you” important to us?

Posted on March 23, 2011 by dgermann

What are the 100 important daily things you want to do up to the moment you die? The things that make living worth going on? Last night I asked this of a group of people and got responses like Ride my motorcycle, Hug my grandkids, Kiss my spouse. Then they went deeper: Go to church, Do for others, Read the Bible, Pray.

As I think about it now, perhaps I wonder: Why is Bible and church and learning to let go important? Why is connection with your loved ones important? Why is it important that you can say “I love you?”

:- Doug.

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The healing work of a lawyer

Posted on March 19, 2011 by dgermann

The healing work of the lawyer includes also healing the family over this losing of Mom and Dad to a disease or a grave, slowly or suddenly.

How do we, together, heal your family? What does your family need? What is it most crying out for? This raises the question not of psychological or emotional healing, nor of economic healing, nor of spiritual healing, but of all of these, and much more, working together. It is the together that the lawyer works to heal.

:- Doug.

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What to say to caregivers?

Posted on March 19, 2011 by dgermann

What to say to these caregivers? Not much. Simply invite to wholeness. Ask what are the good times? Are there compensations? What is working you these days?

:- Doug.

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A Will is a wish that another be well.

Posted on March 19, 2011 by dgermann

Weal is related to will and wish and well. So a Will is a Wish that another be Well. It pulls us out of ourselves to think of another, to think of the other’s well-being.

:- Doug.

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Law is healing work

Posted on March 19, 2011 by dgermann

Law is one of the three original healing professions. I work to extend that healing work.

:- Doug.

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Very common

Posted on March 16, 2011 by dgermann

To die is very common: everyone does it. We do not have to fret over it: it will come as it comes and we have only a little say. But the say we have might be important to those around us.

We can of course ease the pain of the soon to be grieving. We can pass on wisdom.

But there is a larger gift. We can pass on love. Love not as a thing but as an action. What can we do as we are living to love this one and that one and all as one? Each may need something different from us. As we let go of more and more, what is our core, whom have we left to give? Whom can we love, specially?

:- Doug.

Posted in Death and dying, Eldering, Grieving | Leave a comment

Common

Posted on March 16, 2011 by dgermann

Touch a hand
hear a pain
hug a child
make love
make a Will
drink hot chocolate with a friend
worship
To die
is very common

:- Doug.

Posted in Death and dying, Grieving, Healing and Wholeness, Poetry | Leave a comment

Expectancy?

Posted on March 16, 2011 by dgermann

Do you have a life expectancy
Or an expectancy of life?

:- Doug.

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Making a Will is not a math problem

Posted on March 9, 2011 by dgermann

Making a Will is not a math problem: it is a blood, sinew and brain question: How Will I love you?

:- Doug.

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The helping goes both ways

Posted on March 5, 2011 by dgermann

The point of conversation in elder caring is not that you need an expert to navigate this getting older maze but that we need each other. Our group brain is bigger than any one of our brains. When you come to me for help, I need help too: from REAL Services, Inc. (our Area Agency on Aging), from caseworkers, from other lawyers—of course; but also from you and as many of your family as we can gather. For what you want and love and the work you want yet to do and the work you want to leave to others to complete—all of that help I need in order that we, together, do our job well. Our job? Making life whole.

:- Doug.

Posted in Aging, Caring, Conversation, Family | Leave a comment

The Hospice Holler

Posted on March 5, 2011 by dgermann

This is a story of a Granddaughter trying to get her Grandmother into an nursing home. Grandmother had been in hospice care.

 

When the caseworker found out they were planning to give all Grandmother had away and enter the nursing home on Medicaid, he started hollerin’. “I spent all day on the paperwork! Now I’ll have to do it all over! It will delay her admission into the nursing home. She might have to go off hospice!”

 

And of course Granddaughter became anxious: the system seemed to be closing in on her Grandmother for no known reason, imposing unexpected and hidden rules against her.

 

She was battered and baffled by the Hospice Holler.

 

So are we all when we meet the challenges of aging. There are physical and medical challenges, social and emotional. We are working on summing up our lives, putting a capstone on our lives, many of us are doing spiritual and meaning work. Our finances change—for some to travel and avocation and callings, and for some to health and finance needs. The work of our eldering years is more complex than we expected!

:- Doug.

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Inherit from me?

Posted on March 5, 2011 by dgermann

What, son, would you like to inherit from me?

:- Doug.

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Matching gifts with recipients

Posted on March 5, 2011 by dgermann

Most folks have not thought very widely or deeply about how to make a Will—or even at all.

 

Look at it this way: over your life you have collected a whole lot of good stuff, and some of it even has a Dollar value. Some of who you are and what your life is, is living stuff—projects, ideas, dreams, plans, wisdom, bucket lists.

 

What of these and like things do you have? Ask some questions: to whom is each thing most valuable? Who could benefit most from it? Of what does each person in your life have need?

 

When someone dies, watch out for those dump trucks—beep!–beep!–beep! They’re backing in, ready to unload everything in one heap—toys, money, old galoshes, seeds, growing seedlings and saplings and large sequoias.

 

Contrast that with the person who carefully, lovingly matches gifts with recipients—those who need, those who can take the unfinished work further, those who will enjoy what she has long enjoyed, those who will get her soft joke.

:- Doug.

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Of Wills, dumping and arranging

Posted on March 2, 2011 by dgermann

When you make your Will, are you making a dump cake, or a better future (for your kids, for others)? How wide do you stir?

Are you merely unloading the dump truck, or are you consciously arranging your gifts to have the most good effect?

:- Doug.

Posted in Dreams, Family, Wills | Leave a comment

Mom’s flower bed

Posted on March 2, 2011 by dgermann

Mom’s flower bed
Won’t get tended this year
Dad is lost
Sis will plant the annuals
& I will weed
Dad is lost & needs our help
Our children will be calling us
& life does tug
Dad is becoming more lost
Mom’s flower bed
Won’t get much tended this year
Even less next

:- Doug.

Posted in Death and dying, Grieving, Poetry | Leave a comment

Joy of burden

Posted on March 2, 2011 by dgermann

In your old age
Give your children and grandchildren
The joy of the burden of you

:- Doug.

Posted in Aging, Family, Poetry | Leave a comment