Friday, December 16, 2005
The Florida case of Terry Schiavo focused national attention on end-of life issues. Living wills, in particular, became a hot topic. But that case also prompted interest in other ways of settling one's affairs.
 (Click for larger view.) Lou Van Hout
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Dr. Joseph Foley reminiscence
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Lawyers have long recommended writing a last will. But there are other documents we might consider. While you still have your wits about you, assigning power of attorney to someone you trust can prevent lots of problems later.
There's a durable power of attorney for health care and a general power of attorney for financial decisions. Attorney Catherine Joseph of Pepper Pike
has been assigned as a guardian for people who did not have families. But, she says, even for those who do, lots of disagreements can arise.
JOSEPH: Well, let me put it this way. When I first started practicing in the probate court, they used to tell me Ð the magistrate down there told me Ð "You know, it always comes down to money." And I was like, "That is just so pessimistic. It's not always about money." Let me tell you, it's usually about money! Somebody doesn't want the other person to have money, control of the money. Somebody thinks that the other person can't hold the money. Somebody thinks they're going to make money by having Mom live with them because then they're going to get the Social Security checks, which are not always that much anyway but, for some reason, they think, "Hmm. I'm taking care of Mom anyway. If she lives here that's an extra $800-$1,000 a month." It sounds really awful, but I see it all the time.
Joseph Bandera of the company Home Instead Senior Care says arguments can also flare up simply over what's best for Mom or Dad. He saw it in his own family.
BANDERA: You know, because you've got this brother thinking it should be this way and that sister thinking it should be that way. Anybody experiencing that? Because I know we did. And I think it's very difficult not to have a lot of those decisions discussed when Mom and Dad aren't really of the right mind where they can make some of those decisions for you.
One of the Senior Scholars classes at Case Western Reserve University is called 'Decisions at the End of Life.' It's taught by Dr. Joseph Foley.
FOLEY: We try to encourage people to get their documents in place. To get a living will. To get a power of attorney with health care. And we encourage them to get their families together and discuss it with their families and make sure that everybody Ð even the little bastard who lives in California, who's always a problem at the end of life, when he comes in and contradicts everything everybody else wants to do -- but you get even him to understand precisely what you want when you die.
What you want need not be all about financial assets. A survey conducted this past summer by the life insurance company Aliance found that Baby Boomers were not interested in the money that their parents left. Seventy-three percent said what was very important was their parents' personal possessions Ð the little sentimental items. And 91 percent said what they found valuable was family stories.
That's where the 'testament' side of a 'Last Will and Testament' comes in. It's being called an 'ethical will.' That can be a credo set down on paper or merely reminiscences captured on audiotape.
HAGIGI: It just fills in that other piece of the pie or other piece of the puzzle that let people know: Who are you? What are you about?
Katherine Hagigi, a consultant for Hospice of the Western Reserve, has helped people assemble ethical wills.
HAGIGI: Tell us a story from when you were a kid. What was your favorite thing to do in the summers when you were 10? Who was a person in your life who inspired you? Those little questions can bring about a whole bunch of stories that you could just videotape. You telling those stories.
And sometimes, an ethical will sounds like this (MUSIC FADES IN)....
This is a Christmas hymn called Holy Night, written by Marilyn Van Hout. At the time, her body was withering from ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.
HAGIGI: At the time I first met her she was kind of searching for what she was going to leave this world. You know: Why am I here, why am I still here? I'm obviously not able to live Ð live as she wanted to live. She was in bed and needed total assistance from her family. But as we talked, she had so may things about her faith that she wanted to share with people and so many poems, small snippets of poems that she had come up with, that we started to kind of think, "Wow. Let's put these together. You know, share a whole poem with me." And so we'd get that down. And then she'd say, "Wouldn't it be great if that was in a hymn? It would kind of go like thisÉ." And so we'd kind of batter that back and forth. And all of a sudden that energy starts to move and we start to kind of make it into a hymn and we think, "What would this part sound like with this part? And, yeah, let's do that." And all of a sudden, we have a song (MUSIC FADES OUT).
The music was written by the choir director at Madison Avenue Baptist Church, Dennis Fox, and performed here by the John Marshall High School Choir.
Marilyn Van Hout wrote some 113 hymns. They've been published in four hymnals, says her husband Lou. The 75-year-old Van Hout is dictating his own ethical will into a tape recorder, mostly family history and life growing up on a farm.
VAN HOUT: People want to leave messages and I think part of the dying process is made simpler and more complete, by going through, leaving your history and what you thought was important in your life. So I do believe that the process is definitely desirable.
Van Hout's wife even planned her own funeral, which her husband Lou called a 'coming-home ceremony.'
VAN HOUT: She was asking me why I hadn't made the arrangements yet. And basically the answer was, because of all the things she wanted done (laughs)! We had to get choirs arranged and singers and everything else. So it took about a week to get everything lined up.
Eighty-nine-year-old Dr. Michael Foley has expressed his thoughts about his funeral too Ð to his parish priest and his family.
FOLEY: There are to be no bloody bagpipes in the church. Nobody is to sing 'Amazing Grace.' And no child of mine is to rise and say what a fine fellow his father Ð his or her father was. When I tell 'em this, they say, "You'll be dead and gone, we'll do it any way we damn well please.
URYCKI: Have you ever put down your thoughts and feelings for future generations?
FOLEY: Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah. They're tucked away. They're tucked away on computers and in old files in my study and whatnot. Anybody who digs them out may get a shock here and there, but Ð but I've also put down my experience, some of the experiences of my youth. Especially my military experiences because they were Ð they were so determining in what I did with my life, I think. And uh....
URYCKI: Was this in World War II?
FOLEY: This was in World War II. I was, um, in the Mediterranean and in Normandy. I was one of the people who went in with the very first waves.
And those thoughts are exactly the kinds of things that can make up an ethical will. Foley thinks such wills should not be pontificating Ð in some finger-wagging exercise -- but rather a document that might reveal one's shortcomings as well.
Katherine Hagigi says besides what you write down for future generations, an ethical will can serve to help sum up your life.
HAGIGI: Reviewing life in that way can be very positive, because instead of focusing on what's happening that's negative in life, it's saying, "Wow. Look at what I have done. Look at what I have lived. Look at how I have maybe shaped someone's life." Or, Look, I taught all those kids when I was teaching and it was positive." And it can change the way we that look at our own life and our own selves in a positive way.
I'm Mark Urycki, 89.7 WSKU.
Web Resources
Ohio power of attorney forms
Ethical Wills Wills - NPR
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