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Living With Serious Illness |
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 Planning
For Uncertainty
If no one can know when you will die, that doesn't really get you
"off the hook" in dealing with dying. It just makes the
job a little complicated. What would you do if you knew that Uncle
Sam was going to draft you with only a few days' warning, but you
did not know when the notice would come? You would probably try to
visit family and friends, wrap up business affairs, and write some
long letters to leave for loved ones in case you were gone long or
were killed. You might also find that you were especially sensitive
to the joys of nature and family, and especially eager to heal old
rifts and wrongs.
You can approach your uncertainty about dying in this way. No one
can tell you whether this Thanksgiving is going to be your last one,
but why not make it special anyway! Just because you might live another
few years is no excuse not to tape record (or video record) some stories
and advice for grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Everyone has
some rift among family or friends. Just having a serious illness is
enough reason to re-establish contact. You don't have to wait until
later.
"Wait," you may say, "it will be embarrassing to do
all this and then hang on! What if I find my brother and we hug and
forgive one another, and then I am still here, weighing on him some
years later? Or what if I tell my granddaughter that my mother's silver
pin is hers when I die, but I don't die?"
Practice,
practice, practice
If you have episodes of being really quite sick, you and your loved
ones might look on them as rehearsals. If you had died, what would
have been left undone? What goodbyes would have not been said? What
business would have been left unfinished? What goals would not have
been met? You do not have to begin every day anxiously wondering if
it will be your last. But you can take advantage of these rehearsals
to be sure that you have done what you most want to do in the time
you have. |
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Adapted from The
Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness,
by Joanne Lynn and Joan Harrold, copyright by Joanne Lynn, used by
permission of Oxford University Press.
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