I’m a member of AARPs Kitchen Cabinet, a group of bloggers promoting their Decide, Create, Share program.
I’ve been a mother more than half my life. Since the first day I discovered I was pregnant, I arranged my life to protect and care for my children.
Now that they are older and I have successfully kept them from having their faces stick that way or from drinking bleach, it’s time to care for them in a different way.
I’m working through the Living Longer, Living Smarter plan—a course of seven steps completed over forty days. This is part of the Decide, Create, Share program from AARP.
These seven steps will help me take action in four important parts of my life: my home and community, my health, my finances, and my wishes. I see getting these area in order as another way to care for my family. It’s as important in its way as making them eat kale or put on a sweater because I think it’s cold.
My beloved mother-in-law died six years ago. There is no doubt Ruby loved us fiercely. That woman worked so hard, I don’t think she ever ate warm food. She’d work all day in the bank, come home and cook up a great dinner, and not rest with her own plate until she’d served everyone else. Seeing other people cared for made her happy.
Still, when Ruby died without a will, it added hugely to our stress at her passing. There was no conflict at all over dividing her assets, but the hoops we had to jump through to wrap up her estate were a incredibly stressful. It would have shamed the woman who loved to take care of others first, and that make me sad.
I’m determined to show my family how much I care by removing this burden from my passing. It’s likely I have half my life still ahead of me, but when my time comes I want my family free to focus on my awesomeness. How will they have time to have a statue built in my honor if they are scrambling to settle my estate? Kids, I love you and I think I’d look best commemorated in bronze.
Thinking about your retirement and end of life needs isn’t fun when you are still young and immortal like you and I are. I challenge you to sign up for this initiative at DecideCreateShare.org and complete the forty-day program. If you can’t do it because it’s good for you, do it because it’s another way to show your family how much you love them.
Maybe they’ll build a statue in your honor too!
Experiencing grief after a loved one dies is hard enough. Problematic affairs (dying without a will has to be on the top of that list) only exacerbates the stress for those left behind and I am so sorry your family had that difficulty. A story like yours motivates me further to get my affairs organized so our kids aren’t left with too much to organize that we SHOULD have taken care of. Oh, yes, I like the statue idea, too!
All mothers deserve a monument! A good one.
Thank you for this. My parents made such good arrangements in advance (a will, even their preplanned funerals!) It showed us how much they cared about us and took burdens off of us when they passed. I need to get going on these things.