An Important Lesson For Us All

Today’s post begins with a fractal called Easter Eggy. It seems a bit light-hearted and frivolous for such a serious topic but maybe a little lightness is appropriate for such serious topic.
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Robyn and I went down to San Diego for the Easter weekend: I could talk about the vicissitudes of the San Diego freeway system or maybe catalog the weird stains in our hotel room (of which there were many). I could also talk about having not ONE but TWO Easter Dinners with the respective sides of the family (and how I managed to pull that off) but I have a much sadder and more serious tale to relate.
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Robyn’s father (who is 79) took a bad fall on February 2nd. Since then he has been shuttled back and forth from UCSD Medical Center to a Convalescent Hospital. He has been bedridden since the accident and is growing steadily weaker. He seems to have lost interest in almost everything: most importantly, he seems to have lost interest in his own recovery. A psychiatrist has put him on Zoloft but those meds have yet to kick in (and there is some possibility they never will.)
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All of this is sad, but sadder still is the fact that Mr. P has done nothing to prepare for his death: he has no will, no plans for how he wants his final arrangements made and, worst of all, he had made no decision on whether or not he wanted “extraordinary measure” taken should the worse case scenario arise. When Robyn’s mother passed she was fully-prepared (everything was done and all the family had to do was file a few papers to expedite her wishes. Everyone assumed Mr. P had prepared as well so imagine our surprise when we find out NOTHING had been done.
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Now we are in a race against time to get Robyn’s father’s affairs in order before the end comes. (It might be days or weeks: it might take years--nobody knows.) All we know is that his children are no frantically trying to organize things remotely and find documents when they have no idea where to look. This should be a time for the family to come together and support one another but instead it has turned into frantic runnings-about.
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If you haven’t made your arrangements--do your family a favor and get them done. Hell, do YOURSELF a favor. Death or debilitating illness can come to even the young and your family shouldn’t have to guess what you might need/want. It doesn’t take long and the peace of mind it brings is worth it to everyone.