We all live unfinished lives. With the exception of an older man I know who had recently updated his will, paid all his bills on a certain day and went out for a run, came back feeling “tired” and lay down and never got up again…all of leave a lot of things undone. A client of mine’s father was a hoarder and when went to a nursing home her siblings and her had to hire a squad of workers with a truck to spend two weeks basically excavating the house and taking everything to the dumb. (A task made harder by the fact that there were a few valuable objects and documents mixed into the mess.) My best friends mother, mad after her husbands Aunt died leaving them excuators of her estate in another state (without asking) and the years it took them to handle everything, was determined to not leave this sort of burden to her kids. Unfortunately, her husband who declined into dementia did not have the capacity to do the same. So for years after his death she sorted boxes and got rid of things and organized and gave things away. And yet after her death it took her daughter a good six months to separate out the items for family members and get them to them, have Salvation army take other things, and yes sort….the boxes and boxes of photos before putting the Condo on the market, and there will still be paperwork for another year. I think somewhere between the man who died at the end of bill day and the hoarder, there is a balance that represents living but being thoughtful of those who will clean up behind us. (I have to say all three of these people died as they lived.)
There are no finished lives. A friend of mine is dying in a hospital
right now. (post note she died 10/26/21). She is essentially without
family. There will be no one to clear
the stuff out of her apartment. The
landlord will be left to get a squad to haul everything out, and that is with a
month unpaid rent as well. She also had
established no medical power of attorney which made things very difficult after
she got in the hospital. Those she was
most close to were not allowed updates on her medical status and had to beg the
doctors to hear the relevant information we had about her health condition. The law defaults to next of kin, meaning the
hospital found and called a sister she had not spoken to in years and asked her
to make final decisions about medical care for my friend. Reader, if you don’t have a medical power
attorney established, stop pretending you will never die and get the paper work
done! We are all after all in a
pandemic.
There are no perfect lives.
A client of mine has struggled for years with a sort of perfectionism
that keeps her stuck. Afraid to choose
anything for fear of making a wrong choice, or passing up a right choice she
remains firmly affixed to the fence unable to make choices that would move her
forward. She is a potter and recently as
we worked on the perfectionism in the rest of her life she had the insight that
in pottery she knows she had to be experimental or she would do nothing. That it is all “practice” and that sometimes
she likes the piece enough to keep it and others are composted and she begins
again. She realized she has to live
life this way. That she has to be able
to be experimental, make mistakes and start again. She said: “Nothing is
perfect. Nothing is done. Safely never finished”. It is true there is safety in being unfinished
because if we had to live our lives with everything just so, everything ready
to be in its final state. …we could not live.
