Big Life Lesson on my To-do NOW List
In our complex world, nothing is uncomplicated.
To-do lists are a godsend in a sea of overwhelming tasks. We all prioritize differently but often the most important things take a back seat to the squeaky wheel issues of the day.
I wanted to share a big life lesson intended to remind you not to neglect your foundational life and death TO-DOs. Your family's well-being and even your dog's may depend on it.
My father passed away from COVID at the end of 2021. Now as we approach 2 years after his death, we still deal with both the emotional issues but also some remaining financial and logistical effects. Some are seemingly minor but yes, Amazon Prime is still charging my dad and no amount of phone calls will seemingly make that stop. I’ve been reflecting back on an awful week after his death that was a week of “twos”. On Tuesday, 2/22/2022, I was in Wyoming with my mother trying to sort out life without my father. For me, it was lots of To-Dos.
We hear advice to make sure you have your affairs in order all the time.
I have to say my father did a pretty good job making sure Mom has financial security. What he did not realize and neither did I, is the nuances of how you access them can hamstring you.
Primarily, those sources of financial security have to be set up and insured with a backup cushion. The transition of accounts after death takes far longer than it should. With COVID, it took over 6 weeks to get the death certificates. In the meantime, bills kept coming in and there were bills on top of bills we did not anticipate.
Dad got an 8 out of 10 on making sure Mom had access to their accounts, and a 2 out of 10 if they had both died, which could have been a real possibility. They both had COVID, and I am shocked that Mom was the survivor considering during the two years prior she was the one that had health challenges.
Why didn’t Dad get a 10? Here’s a list of why.
Yes, they had a will, but the lawyer had retired and neither Mom nor I knew who had replaced him. Yes, they had dual accounts, but no beneficiaries were designated which means everything would be sent to probate for the lawyers to sort out which equates to time and money lost. He also had individual accounts where his pension landed all the way in Hawaii which paid for the mortgage. In that one, we could not get access to them, not even with a death certificate.
Yes, we could pay the mortgage, but we didn't know how much it was and they couldn’t tell us. No, Mom did not understand, or care to understand the technology Dad used to manage everything and she does not remember the passwords he told her. He had a living will but was put on a ventilator against his wishes because the hospital didn’t have a copy. He did not have a primary care physician in Wyoming to advocate for him and Mom was unable to tell the hospital not to because she was in the hospital too. He didn’t want to worry me and it happened so fast that by the time he realized it, he was admitted directly to the ICU and never came home. No, I did not know where all his documents for taxes are located. …And no, I did not have the phone number of the pension fund and it took months to understand the process and hours to hunt down the actual number.
UGH!~
I would not rank myself in a much better position of dealing with this spaghetti of issues if I had been one of the fallen, too. With this fresh reality check, I was a lot more nervous seeing the carnage of yet another victim of the wind strewn across the Wyoming highway as I drove home.
If that was me, on the umpteenth trip over those months, my affairs would not be easy to deal with. I have work to do immediately to change that situation. The younger your kids are the more important this is, but I had let it slip now that they are fairly independent. I have some updating to do.
Make your wishes known.
I also realized very clearly how much would be lost forever. My father was a prolific and gifted writer. While sifting through his man cave, I found many pages of writing here and there. I wondered how much more sat on his computer sitting cold and inaccessible with no idea of his password or his iCloud account…and did he want us to read it, or was it for his eyes only? I don’t know. He was working on a book about a terrifying airline incident he experienced as a pilot, but is it my place to look for it or should it die with him?
It was an emotional minefield going through his sanctuary and yet someone had to. Mom had been sleeping on the couch because their bedroom was still too painful to enter. I am an only child, so I couldn’t share this responsibility with anyone else either. Ooof!!
The last straw
Those weeks were full of frustrations. Doing all the things Mom relied on Dad for was tough, but doable. Having her cell phone stolen by a young man she has helped since childhood was disturbing and hard, but we handled it. Sitting for hours on end in the banks as we updated the accounts with a death certificate in hand, was boring and arduous, but expected. Moving the horse trailer and old stick-shift dually truck into the barn in subzero weather was actually kind of fun.
What broke my composure, though, was when my adventure-loving dog escaped through a gate I left open in a moment of distraction. Her dog tags had flown off a week prior while playing with another dog. I found her rabies tag in the bushes, but she did not have an ID tag on her because I did not make it a big enough priority in my scramble to do all the other TO-DOS. She is microchipped, but that is only helpful if the finders have a way to scan them & care to. My neglect of that TO-DO brought all the fear and tears I had kept at bay all week.
We searched for hours, contacted animal control, asked everyone in the neighborhood to keep an eye out and finally refocused on our list of affairs to resolve. We came home hours later to find her happily camped in the front yard with the largest bone I have ever seen outside of a dinosaur museum. She managed to find an entire set of leg bones of a deer from femur to foot and was quite proud of her chew toy. I simply collapsed in the snow next to her, grateful she was home and exhausted to my own bones.
So that awful week’s big fat life lesson is this:
While we often live in denial of the inevitable, that doesn’t stop the inevitable from happening.
Get your affairs together and designate a neutral party to keep them safe and updated. Have those uncomfortable conversations with those who love you.
It will be your final and one of the most important gifts to them.
And most importantly:
It’s ok to cry on your dog’s shoulder.
They love you unconditionally, even if they do have dog breath.
So today, as I reflect on that awful week, these are the things that came up.
Life is a marathon. Create a store of emotional and physical resilience that goes deeper than deep. You will someday need it.
You must maintain a commitment to self-care every day to create a rock-solid foundation. Do not stop because you “don’t have time” this week, even when you are heartbroken.
You are only guaranteed yourself as a source of strength in this world because life gets messy for everyone. Having supportive friends and family is a major bonus, however.
The brain-fitness lifestyle I have adopted helped give me the resilience I needed.
Find one that works for you. It will help maintain your emotional core strength as you go through challenging times.
If you want to learn more about how to foster your miraculous mind, subscribe to the Agile Intellect email list to get it delivered directly to your inbox!