The wise nurse looked me straight in the eyes the morning after the emergency room doctor told my aunt and me that my grandmother suffered a catastrophic brain bleed. Gram was in a coma and would not recover.
And yet, the next morning, a different doctor had ordered a stack of tests. Gram didn’t want that. She had a living will. But folks have to bring those documents to the hospital each time. The hospital doesn’t keep them on file.
I was the first one at Gram’s bedside that early dawn some 20 years ago, when that wise nurse walked me through which measures were for comfort and which were life-sustaining. We skipped all the tests. When Mom arrived, we called hospice, so we didn’t have to keep giving those orders.
Orders. They weren’t decisions. Gram made her decisions and shared them with us. We simply had to carry through on them. Because of those hard — oh, so hard — conversations, giving direction to the medical team was the easy part.
Planning endings
Farm succession has been a top category Farm Futures covers as we all move through the “Great Wealth Transfer” — the billions of dollars that will be handed down to the next generation over the following 10 to 20 years.
Still, depending on the survey, somewhat less than half of family farms have a plan in place. Some folks estimate fewer than 1 in 5 farmers have a written plan.
Planning for any ending — a marriage, a life, farm ownership — is hard. Prenuptials, postnups, estate plans, farm transition plans and living wills are time-consuming and expensive.
The toughest hurdles, though, are the conversations. We know the right thing to do is always the hardest. And these are the right things.
Oftentimes, our children don’t want to talk about us dying. But some of our farm children are raising their families on farms where they’re unsure of their financial future. Many have no idea what their parents’ plans are for the farm or their medical decisions.
If that’s the case for your family, then you haven’t finished the job you set out to accomplish when those children were born.
It’s time to go home
Now, let’s go back just eight years. I’m standing in a hospital hallway with my stepfather. It’s a couple decades since we lost Gram. This time, it’s my mother who’s dying.
But there’s no wise nurse guiding me; I am alone with a man who is terrified of losing his wife. He is pushing for one more shot at saving her life.
“One more surgery isn’t going to change what’s happening here,” I tell him.
“But your mom agreed,” he said.
She agreed, I told him, because she loves you and wanted to comfort you while you were beside her. But long before that day, she told us all what she wanted over and over. It is not this.
I told him we have her living will. She’s tired. And she’s ready.
He hung his head, barely nodded, and we took her home. Just in time.
Those days were hard, too. But the decisions were not, because we knew what Mom wanted.
Speaking about her wishes and putting them in writing was her last great act of taking care of those she loved.
Our jobs as parents are to guide our children from their cradles to our graves. So, we must have the toughest conversations with our children and our heirs. We must plan for our financial and medical exits from our businesses and this world, respectively. And we must put those decisions in writing.
How much time do you have to make good on your final act of love?