WindOnHisNose
BENEFACTOR
Lino Lakes MN (MY18)
The thread I am initiating now is regarding a subject that I have given a great deal of thought...preparing for our final flight. I am wanting to avoid religious overtones, in that we have a very diverse group of people on this website, and I wish to leave the spiritual side of life to others, so in responding or adding to the thread I respectfully ask that you keep this in mind.
You may recall that a dear friend of mine, Ron Barrows, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November of 2009. Ron was an avid proponent of aviation, having built a Glastar, was a private pilot and was well-known at the local airport as the man to talk to when it came time to upgrade or finish your hangar. He was a do-it-all, get ‘er done type and the kind of person who lit up the hangar when he came around. Optimistic, up beat, bright…you know the type.
Ron asked me to accompany him to his chemotherapy sessions, and I have shared with you as to how that went, so I won’t bore you with the details except to say that it was one of the most important things I had ever done in my life. I watched him take his medicine, and I mean that at a number of levels.
As Ron began to fail near Thanksgiving of 2010 he called me one day and asked me to meet him at my hangar (which was really his, in that his handiwork was seen throughout) and I agreed to meet him there. When I arrived he was sitting inside at the workbench and I could tell he had something on his mind. That something sat in front of him, a document which I had given to him months earlier, a living will entitled “Five Wishes”. It is a directive which allows one to think through how one wishes to go through our last days. The idea is to have a legal framework which spells out what our wishes might be for things we face and are unable to respond to verbal or other sensory input. Things like do we want life support, do we want pain medicines, do we want to be given IV fluids, do we want to be cremated or buried, what music might we want…things that are sometimes really difficult to think about and discuss with anyone. It is a fact, though, that many do not take the time to do this, even when faced with a terminal illness. I had completed my Five Wishes a couple of years earlier, when I had just survived a life-threatening complication of a relatively benign medical procedure, so I knew what this document meant to me and to my loved ones. I had gently encouraged Ron to give this some thought, and there we sat, brothers of a sort, thinking thoughts that are difficult, to this day, for me to write about.
Ron began by saying that he had discussed this document and his wishes with Cathy, his beloved bride, but she had felt unable to really think about it because it was really hard for her to imagine that her husband, this strong, tall compassionate man might really be taken away from her. Knowing Cathy, I could appreciate the dilemma she was in, and the dilemma Ron was in. So I took it as an honor and duty to help him fill it out.
We went through the document line by line, and I would ask him questions to clarify anything that wasn’t clear to him, or for things that weren’t clear to me from his responses. I was surprised by how clearly he had visualized his final days, how much detail he was willing to discuss there in the privacy of the hangar, with the sound of airplane engines flying and taxiing about. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what he did not want. He knew how he wanted to be taken care of if he suffered pain, if he wanted the priest around or not, if he wanted life support if it was clear that he wasn’t likely to make it. He looked at me with that mischievous look when he joked about some “funny” funerals he had gone to, how he had attended some that were really great celebrations about the life of the individual who had passed, how he wanted it to be like that for him.
I was amazed at the clarity of his thought process and the extent to which he, the eternal optimist, had planned for the end of his life. No tears were shed. No anger was expressed. No regrets were offered.
When the final page was completed he sat there, looking very tired, but looking very relieved. It was the same kind of satisfied look I had seen when he had completed a modification to his airplane, or after he completed the hangar. Satisfied. At peace.
Ron stood up, gave me a firm handshake, then a big hug right there in the hangar that he built and we both pretty unsuccessfully fought back tears as we wondered what would be in store for him in the months to come. I could sense, though, a peacefulness in his demeanor which I had not seen coming into the hangar.
I write this to you, my friends, as encouragement to you to please take time to sit down with whatever instrument you choose and fill out in detail a living will. There is nothing special about Five Wishes, except that it provides you with a template which lets you focus on the threshold of the final landing strip, the final runway, at a time when you are still at altitude, able to see clearly. Please take time to do this with your spouse, your significant other, with your best friend or someone you trust. It is very important.
Thank you.
Randy
You can download the pdf of Five Wishes at www.agingwithdignity.org/forms/5wishes.pdf. I am sure there are others, but this is the one I filled out for myself, so I decided to share it with you.
You may recall that a dear friend of mine, Ron Barrows, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November of 2009. Ron was an avid proponent of aviation, having built a Glastar, was a private pilot and was well-known at the local airport as the man to talk to when it came time to upgrade or finish your hangar. He was a do-it-all, get ‘er done type and the kind of person who lit up the hangar when he came around. Optimistic, up beat, bright…you know the type.
Ron asked me to accompany him to his chemotherapy sessions, and I have shared with you as to how that went, so I won’t bore you with the details except to say that it was one of the most important things I had ever done in my life. I watched him take his medicine, and I mean that at a number of levels.
As Ron began to fail near Thanksgiving of 2010 he called me one day and asked me to meet him at my hangar (which was really his, in that his handiwork was seen throughout) and I agreed to meet him there. When I arrived he was sitting inside at the workbench and I could tell he had something on his mind. That something sat in front of him, a document which I had given to him months earlier, a living will entitled “Five Wishes”. It is a directive which allows one to think through how one wishes to go through our last days. The idea is to have a legal framework which spells out what our wishes might be for things we face and are unable to respond to verbal or other sensory input. Things like do we want life support, do we want pain medicines, do we want to be given IV fluids, do we want to be cremated or buried, what music might we want…things that are sometimes really difficult to think about and discuss with anyone. It is a fact, though, that many do not take the time to do this, even when faced with a terminal illness. I had completed my Five Wishes a couple of years earlier, when I had just survived a life-threatening complication of a relatively benign medical procedure, so I knew what this document meant to me and to my loved ones. I had gently encouraged Ron to give this some thought, and there we sat, brothers of a sort, thinking thoughts that are difficult, to this day, for me to write about.
Ron began by saying that he had discussed this document and his wishes with Cathy, his beloved bride, but she had felt unable to really think about it because it was really hard for her to imagine that her husband, this strong, tall compassionate man might really be taken away from her. Knowing Cathy, I could appreciate the dilemma she was in, and the dilemma Ron was in. So I took it as an honor and duty to help him fill it out.
We went through the document line by line, and I would ask him questions to clarify anything that wasn’t clear to him, or for things that weren’t clear to me from his responses. I was surprised by how clearly he had visualized his final days, how much detail he was willing to discuss there in the privacy of the hangar, with the sound of airplane engines flying and taxiing about. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what he did not want. He knew how he wanted to be taken care of if he suffered pain, if he wanted the priest around or not, if he wanted life support if it was clear that he wasn’t likely to make it. He looked at me with that mischievous look when he joked about some “funny” funerals he had gone to, how he had attended some that were really great celebrations about the life of the individual who had passed, how he wanted it to be like that for him.
I was amazed at the clarity of his thought process and the extent to which he, the eternal optimist, had planned for the end of his life. No tears were shed. No anger was expressed. No regrets were offered.
When the final page was completed he sat there, looking very tired, but looking very relieved. It was the same kind of satisfied look I had seen when he had completed a modification to his airplane, or after he completed the hangar. Satisfied. At peace.
Ron stood up, gave me a firm handshake, then a big hug right there in the hangar that he built and we both pretty unsuccessfully fought back tears as we wondered what would be in store for him in the months to come. I could sense, though, a peacefulness in his demeanor which I had not seen coming into the hangar.
I write this to you, my friends, as encouragement to you to please take time to sit down with whatever instrument you choose and fill out in detail a living will. There is nothing special about Five Wishes, except that it provides you with a template which lets you focus on the threshold of the final landing strip, the final runway, at a time when you are still at altitude, able to see clearly. Please take time to do this with your spouse, your significant other, with your best friend or someone you trust. It is very important.
Thank you.
Randy
You can download the pdf of Five Wishes at www.agingwithdignity.org/forms/5wishes.pdf. I am sure there are others, but this is the one I filled out for myself, so I decided to share it with you.