In an ironic twist, I am pushing back my article about how breaking expectations to ourselves can be crippling. No, that’s not what’s happening here. Something more time-sensitive has come to my attention, so I expect that you’ll cut me some slack when I push it back a week. But if you don’t…? That’s on me. :D ___________________________________________________ This story was written in honour or Death Awareness Week, May 13-19, 2019. Last summer we celebrated Gran’s one hundredth birthday by having a family reunion at her house in St. Bruno, Quebec. Four generations turned up, the teens even brought dates. It was chaos. See, my cousin Charlotte put herself in charge of the whole thing. She sent out invitations and… that was it. “Family Potluck in Bruno July 7 @ noon.” Sweet! On the day I got the family packed up, threw towels, a lasagne, and the spinach artichoke dip in the back of the hatch, and headed out. After a quick stop for wine, we were headed for the Victoria bridge. The day was stunning, hardly a cloud in the sky. With temperatures forecast to reach the high 20s, I was looking forward to cooling off in the lake. We got to our family property just after twelve, and there were already forty or more people running around. There were nine spinach and artichoke dips on the picnic table on the back deck. And seven lasagnes. I was beginning to detect a problem. “Where’s Gran?” I asked Charlotte. “I dunno. I figured someone would bring her out,” she replied, looking around. I sent a blast text out to the family to see if my cousin was right. Nope, no one had thought to stop by the retirement home to collect the guest of honour. Fortunately, my brother Jim hadn’t left the city yet. It was going to be cramped in his car, but they’d manage. “Sure," I thought, “that’s exactly how she would have envisioned her last road trip, surrounded by misbehaving kids, the smell of decades-old tobacco smoke leeching from the upholstery into her polyester-wrapped butt. Meanwhile, back at the homestead, more family members had begun arriving. And more lasagnes. A dozen Caesar salads and seven Crock Pots of meatballs had been added to the, what, mix? Is mix even appropriate in the context of four identical foodstuffs? Did I mention the spinach and artichoke dip? We had enough to spackle-texture every ceiling in the 3500 square foot house. Including the basement! Crying. Now I hear crying. And not just the fake, Bobby pushed me into a puddle crying of a four year-old. This was wailing. I ran toward the source of the sound and found my third? fourth? maybe second even? cousin Amy, age eight, with blood gushing out of a gash in her forehead. It turned out that the kids, having found nothing better with which to amuse themselves, made a game of Who Can Throw the Rock the Highest? The good news is, Amy’s got a great little arm… Inside we go to get her cleaned up. Gran was a nurse as is my sister Olivia. I enlisted the younger’s help and she corralled a still-screaming Amy deeper into the house in search of the first aid kit. I turned on my heel to see what other fires needed putting out and immediately stepped into a huge pile of dog s#!t. Perfect! “Who’s watching these animals?!” I screamed internally. As I was disinfecting my sandal (and foot) in the garage sink, Jim was helping Gran out of his low-slung car. Twenty minutes and a lot of swearing later – I totally get my potty mouth from her! – my sweat-soaked Gran had landed. I went over to her for a hug, stronger than you would ever believe, and asked if her walker was in the back of the car. Jim’s eyes went wide. He left it on the curb outside Gran’s building. “Chicklet,” my grandmother whispered, addressing me by the pet name she gave me the day I was born, “I’d really like to change out of these smoky clothes. I have a dress in the house.” A day and a half later, I’d gotten her up the seven steps and across the threshold into the living room. “I’ll just have a rest here. Can you look for the dress?” I left her in the chintz-covered chair I’d always known to be hers. I don’t remember anyone else ever sitting in it. Dress in hand, I returned to the living room. The look on my grandmother’s face was one of disgust. “What the hell is that smell, and what is it doing in my house?” she asked. I sniffed, recognising it instantly. Patchouli. My face likely mirrored Gran’s. In that moment the twentysomething wife of one of my cousins breezed into the room, reeking of the stuff yet rummaging for her bag for another spritz. She pulled out the little brown bottle and, before Gran or I could stop her, had reapplied. She didn’t even pay her respects to the birthday girl before escaping back into the garden. Dabbing her eyes, Gran said, “I want so badly to leave this room, but I need to sit a bit longer. Be a dear, Chiclet; open the door.” After a second, she added, “And get me a drink.” The only daytime cocktail I’d ever seen Gran drink was a Pimm’s and ginger beer. I went over to the liquor cabinet but couldn’t find any, so I ventured outside. I discovered the cache of wine that had accumulated, but no one thought to bring Pimm’s. Head hung low, I returned to Gran’s side, hoping that a white wine spritzer would do. “My birthday and no Pimm’s?” Her disgust was palpable. She put down the glass. “Maybe I’ll just close my eyes,” she said dismissively and with more than a hint of the passive aggressive. Outside, things had scarcely gotten more relaxed. There were over twenty kids on the floating dock, diving off of both boards, and nary an adult in sight. Yep. I said nary. This was serious. I looked around for someone who could watch the kids… Julie patchouli! She was in her bathing suit and seemed to be quite sober. And if the essential oils were to wash off in the lake, so much the better. She reluctantly agreed. Me? I had bigger fish to fry… When I had emerged from the house, I noticed that no one had started eating. I looked around the table on the deck and could find neither plate nor fork, neither knife nor napkin. I jumped into my car and sped off, narrowly missing a yapping spaniel. I made a quick stop at Provigo for disposable dinnerware and another at the SAQ for a bottle of Pimm’s No. 1. I raced back to the house eager to speak to Charlotte, find out what other gaps there were in the party-planning. It was another three trips into town for me, the last to pick up the birthday cake we ordered two hours before. I sent it in with one of the cousins via the front door so Gran wouldn’t see it and handed the candles to another. “Gather everyone!” I yelled to the group as a whole, before making my way to the living room. “Three hours.” What’s that, Gran?” “I’ve been sat here three hours, staring out this window, watching them all have a great day at the lake, and not one person came in to sit with me, to talk to me, to bring me food, or to wish me a happy birthday.” That rant was more words than Gran had said in a row since she’d been ninety, and it set off a spate of coughing. “Fv@king ingrates.” “I thought you were going to close your eyes?” I reminded her. She rolled her eyes so hard, I’m sure she saw brain. “I tried, but as soon as I closed my eyes, there was the most God-awful racket!” It seemed the only person who had any music with them was my fifteen year-old nephew with the nose ring. “Happy birthday to you!” rang out from the masses. At least they’d gotten everyone together. The cake was pushed through to the living room on a rolling kitchen cart. Gran blew out the candles reading ‘100’ and the family cheered. Getting a whiff of the chocolatey cake, she turned to me and asked, “You know I’m allergic to hazelnuts, right?” OK, that story never happened but it is the story that many of us live through when our loved ones don’t plan ahead. There’s a lot of confusion, a lot of running around, a lot of people on the sidelines not helping at all because they don’t know what to do. Kids and animals will run amok unless entertained in some way. And, invariably, most of the work gets dumped into the lap of a single person. Sadly, the last person anyone is thinking about is the Guest of Honour. It was Gran’s last farewell, and she deserved better. Please plan ahead, people. Planning for a peaceful rest of your life starts now. AuthorChristie Morden is a legacy coach serving Calgary and surrounding areas. She helps people of all ages and all levels of health heal their relationships with things that have happened in their lives, with loved ones - living, dead, or estranged - and with their own eventual and inevitable deaths.
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I have been really delinquent in getting started with this whole blogging thing. That could be because I am a woman of a certain age who doesn’t understand its value, but I think it’s more likely fear that’s been guiding my hand. Or, uh, not guiding it, as it were. I mean, what if I wrote my heart out, poured my soul onto the page, and no one read it? Talk about a kick in the old ego! So, I’ve decided to write for me, no expectations. But I’m getting ahead of myself. You can go to my Who? page http://www.violetlight.ca/who.html and learn about how I came to be an end-of-life coach, but I want to use this space to tell you who I am as a human being and how I’ve come to be her. As many of us do, I wrestled with my inner demons for decades before deciding that I was stronger than them. I did the unthinkable and *gasp* went into counselling. One of the things my counsellor, Michelle, talked about was building a toolbox. Now, me, I tend to throw myself fully into every undertaking (inadvertent end-of-life pun!). Around that time I had begun to discover that real wisdom could be found on Facebook, y’know, between all of the cat videos and backbiting. I started to collect quotes and memes and, weekly, I would print the most poignant among them off on nice, thick paper, something that was gonna last and make a big impression on my subconscious. I made an actual toolbox. OK, I took the cellophane off a Ferrero Rocher eight-pack (the reason I don't have a six-pack!), replaced it with some of my favourite pics and quotes, and started filling up the box with wisdom from the interwebs. I’ll be honest, it felt great! Liberating and empowering (trite, I know, but it’s the only word that fits), it was the beginning of a six year – so far – journey. I also read ebooks and foldy books, and I often use my commute time to listen to audiobooks. This week it was Robin Sharma’s Extraordinary Leadership which is free through Audible. Just because something is free doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value! Robin speaks of his father’s mandate that he read for at least thirty minutes a day every day, because, “One idea in one book (or blog!) may just change your life forever.” I have an epiphanic (huh, I didn’t know that was legitimately a word 😊) moment pretty much weekly, and the trajectory of my thinking changes. It’s exciting and challenging and provides an incredible opportunity for growth. This week my epiphany was this: In the absence of an expressed (social, professional…) contract, the only person responsible when someone doesn’t meet expectations is the person holding those expectations. The only person responsible when someone doesn’t meet expectations is the person holding those expectations. As the crux of this week's blog, I figured it was worth repeating. A million years ago I was working out of a busy chiropractic clinic. I was under contract which is fancy talk for, “You don’t have a client, you don’t get paid.” But I also knew that the more smoothly the clinic ran, the more likely patients would be to have a good experience and, subsequently, send more patients our way. During the day, when I wasn’t with a client, I would do laundry, pull files, whatever it took to ease the burden. If you think I’m looking for praise, I’m not. The opposite is true, really; I Was Pissed. How was it that I was the only one pitching in? But my anger toward the others was misguided, and, if I’m honest, didn’t do anything but hurt me. In hindsight I can see that the others had been doing the chicken with their heads cut off thing for the better part of three and a half/four hours. They needed to take that time to sit and chill, grab a glass of water, go for a pee. Another example, one from even deeper in my past, illustrates one final point. My mum, God love her, had a favourite question which was, “Do you like to watch me struggle?!” The response had to be immediate action on my and my brothers’ part, often taking paper grocery bags from her arms. Her frustration stemmed from her unmet expectation of what we would do. How much simpler would it have been for all involved if she had just engaged us in a contract? “Could you guys give me a hand?” would have spared everyone. Takeaways:
Something to mull over: If someone consistently falls short of your expectations:
And, finally, you do the greatest harm to yourself when you don’t meet your own expectations. Come by next week and we’ll dig deeper into that. __________________________________________ All coaching is relationship coaching, even when we are talking about end-of-life. Or maybe especially. Did you know that it’s possible to rewrite your past and repair relationships, past and present, by re-examining your unmet expectations and looking at things from others’ perspectives? My goal as an end-of-life coach is to help people live out the rest of their days with as much peace as they can. It’s never too early to start. Imagine how much peace it would bring to release the weight of others’ expectations and to get a handle on how to best manage your own. 403-616-6108 will get you a free phone consultation. Yours on the journey, Christie Truth Time: I'm considered pretty odd by some people -- mostly by the members of my own family -- and not just for my death-positive attitude. I wear mismatched socks, go barefoot on the golf course, and have a lanyard of Froot Loops hanging from my car's rear view mirror as the consummate reminder to be a Froot Loop in a world of Cheerios. (Aside: Microsoft Word recognises Cheerios but not Froot. Huh.) What, then, you might ask, have I chosen as my funeral songs? Firstly, let me say that I do not want a staid and somber funeral, but I would like a small service at Hillhurst United Church. "Whoever you are, wherever you're at, join us on the journey." I want them to send me off from this here journey, the first song being Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python's Spamalot. I want clapping and singing and general merriment. That song has become my anthem -- one of them, anyway -- and I want to leave it as my legacy. Since I was in grade eleven, I think, I have wanted The Alan Parsons Project's Old and Wise as a funeral song, my way of saying goodbye and letting my people know how much they meant to and impacted me. Check this out, if you’re unfamiliar with the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4HI1_LTWIk I would love to do exactly that, a photo montage of my life. Then, once everyone is all good and sobbing, I want to switch to Terry Jacks’ Seasons in the Sun and I want people to dance and to sing as loudly as they are able. There are a couple more I've chosen. The first is my alma mater's School Hymn, God Be in My Head. It has stuck with me all these years. Short and sweet, here are the lyrics: "God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in mine eyes and in my looking. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my heart and in my thinking. God be at mine end and at my departing." Now, in spite of the fact that I go to church, I'm not especially religious, but that's gold right there! And the last (as of my writing) is Paul Rumboldt's, How Well Did You Live?, the last line of which is, "How well did you live, how well did you love, and learn to let go?" So, yeah, those are my reminders to look for the joys in life, keep love in your heart, and live the Golden Rule. Let's be frank; once you're dead there's really not much time left to express yourself. Most of us have never even heard of, let alone prepared, an ethical will, so our choice of funeral music can serve as a last glimpse into who you are, what you’ve learned in your life, and, ultimately, what’s important to you. Have you thought about your own funeral songs? What would you like them to be? Don't hesitate to call if you would like to learn more about writing an ethical will, 403-616-6108.
OK, nothing like jumping in with both feet! First of all I would like to point out that assistance in dying is preferred over the word suicide, the latter of which is unfairly fraught with stigma. There is a similarity aside from the obvious; neither is entered into lightly. And a significant difference: medical assistance in dying might actually be taking the easy way out. Huh. MAID has certainly become a hot-button topic in Canada and throughout the world of late and understandably so. It also seems to me that very few of us are on the fence, but feel free correct me if I'm wrong. Advocates don't think we're going far enough, that the exclusions laid down by the Canadian Senate are unfair and almost arbitrary. We've all heard it said that we treat our pets more humanely. Opponents of the practice think that any measure that serves to hasten a person's death is one too many. The religious arguments abound, so I really don't think I need to spell them out here. I will ask a question, however. Canadians' life expectancy rose almost 44% between the years 1921 and 2011, from 57 to 82. One could say that God made us smart enough to succeed in our pursuit of medicine. Good for us! My question is simply this: Is it not possible that He also gave us enough smarts to find a way to let our loved ones die? And the compassion to choose to do so? I wasn't sure if I was going to proclaim which side of the fence I'm on, but I guess that ship has long sailed. I am not advocating physician-assisted dying -- that is as personal a decision as they come -- but I am not afraid of it either. And all I really do know is that if a person has decided that he or she can no longer bear a debilitating disease or ailment and has decided that death is the only thing that will offer relief, a means to that end can be found. I just prefer to leave it to a professional to ensure that it goes smoothly, that the individual dies peacefully without fear that the attempt will fail. As with any controversial personal decision, if you don't believe in it -- abortion, same-sex marriage, medical assistance in dying -- then don't do it. I, for one, am available to support the people who do just as I would any other client. They are no less deserving of my services. In fact, they may just need me more. That's a little stark, isn't it? Where's the soft language we're supposed to couch that information in? Euphemisms and whatnot? The new western world is far too scared of death to actually call it by name! But here's what's wrong with that: If we can't say it, we give it all the power, leaving us without. Now, I don't know about you, but when my time comes, when I am facing death, I'll want to hold onto as much control as I can. And I won't want to feel isolated in my dying because the people around me haven't developed the language to talk to me about it. Now, some of you might think me a hypocrite for calling myself an end-of-life rather than death coach, but please allow me to explain. End-of-life is a time of preparation. It can involve funeral decisions, living wills, last will and testaments, advanced directives, among other things. All of these can -- and should -- be taken care of well before any dramatic health changes, but, sadly, that is not always the case. Rather than burdening the family with them when it's too late, an end-of-life coach will step in. The family's presence is needed at the bedside. Another component of end-of-life is the dying process itself. At that point the coach will help bring peace to the individual and family by facilitating communication and engaging in ceremony or ritual tailored to the family's own background. I can also offer support in the form of gentle massage, a soothing touch for the dying person, strokes which I can also teach the family. I will also be on hand to give caregivers a well-deserved break. Right, so that's end-of-life. Death, on the other hand, is -- to my mind -- the transition of an individual's spirit out of their body. Part of the end-of-life process to be sure, but not all of it. And not necessarily the last either. With a natural death there is no law requiring the body to be whisked immediately away. Some families will choose to sit vigil until everyone has found their peace. You may choose a home funeral. Your end-of-life coach will be right there. Don't waste those last precious moments with your loved one. |
Christie MordenMental Health Coach Archives
March 2022
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