Get Your S#%t Together

Are you one of those people who thinks that if they prepare to write their will that they are inviting tragedy to happen to them?

Guess what?  It doesn't work that way.

Chanel Reynolds

If you haven't taken care of executing your will, and/or sharing bank account numbers with your spouse or partner, then you should do it today.

Not to be an alarmist, but you really have no idea what is going to happen to you and you should be prepared.  Think of it as a gift that you are giving to the people that you love.  Life has a way of catching you off-guard and then, unfortunately, you find yourself with regrets.

I promise you, once you take care of figuring out who is charge of your health decisions and your property should you not be in a position to say, you will feel amazing!

First stop: a great web site called Get Your Shit Together (http://getyourshittogether.org/)  No shit.  That's really what the website is called.  It offers free downloads of lots of templates for wills, living wills and power of attorney.

Chanel Reynolds started the website a few years ago after her young and vigorous husband was hit by a car while bicycling.  He tragically died from the accident, leaving Reynolds with two children to raise.  She knew she and her husband had drafted wills for each other but the wills weren't signed and she had no idea how much money they had in their bank account.

I related to Reynolds story.  My husband was sick for about two and a half years before he died and I remember that awful feeling of being completely helpless when the doctors came to me one day when he was in the hospital and they asked me if I had power of attorney.  I told the doctors I didn't and they quickly replied, "You better get it today."

All at once the sheer mighty weight of our collective finances fell on my shoulders and I was not prepared to take them over either.  My husband had a will but it was out of date.  I didn't have a will and I didn't have power of attorney.  And our dear son was thirteen years old during this chaotic and emotional time.

Of course, now I do have a will and a living will and I feel a lot better knowing that copies of those essential documents sit in my attorney's file cabinet.

No matter what your situation, read Chanel's story and check out her helpful website which features a checklist of things that you may want to review to ensure that your property and your health are handled the way you want.

Here is the link to Chanel's story recently published in The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/your-money/estate-planning/shell-tell-you-its-time-to-think-ahead.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=your-money&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1359424907-eY6eXyTxpnJ6bVGav6sExw

Happiness Is A Choice

Dear Readers,

Today's post is a continution of yesterday's chat about life being easier to navigate when you embrace a positive attitude.  As the below story says, happiness is a choice, and you can practice it as much as you want!!

A very good friend sent me this story that was recently published in a British newspaper called The Guardian.  It gently addresses the thoughts of people who know they are at the end of their lives.  The story is timely because it gets right to the core of addressing how we live our lives verses how we wish we had lived our lives.  My friend said she found the story below to be "rather uplifting, because we might still have time to prevent some of our own regrets."  I agree!

True happiness comes from forgetting about yourself and doing something for someone else just because you want to, not because of what you're going to get in return.  You do it just because you know it makes the other person happy. 

I found this philosophy to be true even after my husband died.  Helping my son, a friend or someone at work freed up my mind and let me temporarily think about something else.  Sometimes it was a relief to get out of that heavy cloud of hurt and try to become part of something lighter. 

Focusing on the bad, the ugly and the negative, just puts you in a bad, ugly or negative frame of mind and it's hard to believe that anything constructive will come out of that.  I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did:

Top five regrets of the dying

By Susie Steiner

The Guardian

Wednesday 1 February, 2012

A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

A palliative nurse has recorded the top five regrets of the dying. Photograph: Montgomery Martin/Alamy

There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

We've all played this game, the game of "woulda, shoulda, coulda" and no one ever wins.

If you weren't with your loved one when their death occurred, you are now probably thinking about all of the things that would be different if you had been there.  You're thinking about how your present life might be very different if you had been with your loved one at their time of death. You might even think you could have prevented it from happening.  "I could have done more, " "If only I had gone for a visit earlier/later in the day," "I should have stayed with him/her and not gone on my trip," "Why didn't I encourage her/him to fight the illness/disease more?"

I played that game for months after my husband died and then I finally came to the realization that I really was doing everything, and I mean everything, that I could to keep my husband healthy.  It was not a sudden thought that hit me instantly.  It was more of a gradual understanding of the cumulative effect of the things I was doing and what was happening to him medically.

You never have control over the other person's situation and you can't beat yourself up over your inability to own it.  You will feel guilty for awhile but you should only let yourself feel that way for a short amount of time.  Set a date and tell yourself you're going to start working on letting it go.  You have to tell yourself -- because it's true -- that whatever you were doing at the time was the right thing to be doing at that moment.  Otherwise, you wouldn't have been doing it.  You are only letting "woulda, shoulda, coulda" roll around in brain because you are able to exercise the knowledge of hindsight.  Now, looking back, it is so easy to say, "I should have done it another way." 

But would you really have done it another way?  Probably not.  You have to make peace with it and let it go.

More importantly, your loved one wouldn't want you to feel like this.  If you said something to your loved one that you regret, that is very human and very understandable.  To rid yourself of those regrets, you can always go to a place where you feel close to that person and have a "talk" with them to tell them you're sorry about what you said or you could write them a note explaining why you said what you did and how you would never have said those words had you known they would be the last words spoken to them. 

I am lucky.  I have no regrets about my last words to my husband and that gives me some peace.