Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Perfectly Unfinished

 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.

Live a perfectly unfinished life.   I have told me daughter that when I die the box of college papers I could not part with, the file drawers of old campaigns I worked on and finacial papers, and old journals can go straight to recycle.  I have shown her where the one file is that has important legal paper work in it and where all the passwords to my computer stuff can be found.  I have told her to take what possessions of mine she wants and give away or dispose of the rest.  But I hope that whatever laundry is undone, dishes undone, projects or paperwork, that the expression of love, and the acts of kindness and the fight for justice has been done in a perfectly unfinished way!  I hope that I will feel that over all I have spent the hours of my life on the things that matter most.  


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