Nine months ago I was walking along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice with a coworker, taking photos of the unbelievably blue Mediterranean with my cellphone. We stopped for a bite at one of the many restaurants under the boardwalk, and we were guided to a table right on the beach. I took a photo of my wine glass casting a shadow on the table, lounges, sand and water in the background. Rarely do my business trips afford me the kind of down-time that permits me to relax, but there, I relaxed, and I stayed that way for all the days I was there. It was remarkable. I vowed to return as soon and as often as possible.

This photo could be of anywhere, but when the feeling of contentment envelopes me, I know it was taken in Nice.

The evil people of this world will not take that from me.

 

I look forward to a remarkable year.

 

“Designated beneficiary”. The space on the financial form stumped me. With no heirs, no spouse, no family, who do you leave your “wealth” to? I’m using the term “wealth” here somewhat tongue-in-cheekily, but if I step back for a moment and assess my financial situation, while it’s not considerable, it’s still wealth. It has value. It’s money that I’ve paid into a 401K or an IRA or even a simple savings account. It’s money I hope to have when I eventually retire, and it’s money I won’t need when I’m dead. Unlike the Pharaohs, I don’t plan on having a memorial built into which all my worldly possessions will go, to be someday dug up by a fedora-wearing adventurer.

The reality is that I need an estate plan. Money left in retirement accounts is one small (for me) part of my estate – my “stuff” is another. And then there are things I haven’t even thought of yet. So, for now, let’s talk about getting started.

When should I start estate planning?  This sums it up quite simply, and the answer is “now”. Forbes goes so far as to show you, in eight steps (with pictures!), how to start a conversation about estate planning with others

I’d go so far as to say, have that conversation with yourself first. Step one: “take stock of all your assets”, which may be a daunting process. I do believe you need to set aside time with minimal distraction to do this, and I found that treating it like a brainstorming session helped. Write it all down, in detail, whether on a piece of paper or to a file in Evernote (Jamie Todd Rubin gave some great tips on how to do this the other day: Going Paperless: 6 Steps for Life Continuity Planning in Evernote). If you’re going to go the paper route, just make sure you put that paper somewhere you’ll find it later (or, scan it to a file and shred the paper). If putting details down makes you feel uncomfortable, think about where the details “live” and whether or not the important people in your life can access it in an emergency. If it’s all in your head, and you become incapacitated, how will they get it? It’s something you need to take into consideration.

While it wasn’t specifically estate planning, the financial planner I’m working with had me “take stock” as part of the process. No, it wasn’t easy, but it forced me to look at the whole of it, and to think about how I could better organize it in such a way that I wouldn’t have to go through the “taking stock” every time something changed or needed to change. A job change, for example, may result in a new 401K plan that is managed by a different investment firm, which results in more information you need to keep track of.

Which brings me back to answering the question of “designated beneficiary”. After some consideration and talking to some friends, I decided to designate someone I’m not related to but who I consider family. While we all hope that this designation doesn’t come into play sooner than expected, I feel better for having made this decision on my terms, knowing full well what I was doing, and with an eye to the future.

Senescence. What a pretty word for “to deteriorate”, or to put it more gently, “to grow old”.

A friend posted a link to an opinion article written over two years ago by Dr. Craig Bowron for The Washington Post: Our unrealistic views of death, through a doctor’s eyes. Why it resurfaced two years after its original publication date is determined by some weird algorithm only social media understands, but every now and again I get something worthwhile out of that mystical metric.

This is a well-written piece from the point of view of someone who is confronted with death and dying every day, and as I read the article, the voice I heard, speaking in the first person, came from someone who was tired – not of the dying, but of those of us who are in denial of our eventual end.

For many Americans, modern medical advances have made death seem more like an option than an obligation.

My grandmother will have been dead for 22 years this month. My mother still blames herself for “not doing enough” for a woman who was in her 80s and rapidly declining in health. When she’s not blaming herself, she’s blaming the physicians, the hospital, the nursing home…when I once confronted her with what I thought was painfully obvious, “Mom, she was going to die eventually”, the stricken look on her face said what my mother couldn’t: how dare I presume she would ever die. That my mother believed this, or lived in a version of reality where this was the truth, frightened me. The last thing I wanted for myself is a long, protracted death or a prolonged suffering, so naturally, it’s not something I want for her. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to have the “Do Not Resuscitate” conversation with someone who doesn’t think anyone should die?

Sequestering our elderly keeps most of us from knowing what it’s like to grow old.

I grew up in a multi-generational household, and I saw first hand what it was like to grow old. For all intents and purposes I grew up in Coney Island Hospital where my grandmother was a frequent inpatient. Our lives revolved around Grandma’s medication clock; we all ate a salt-free heart-condition diet; and we never went too far from home lest a trip to the hospital was imminent. I grew to learn what the sound of her breathing was supposed to sound like, and what to do when it didn’t. When my grandmother started to have transient ischemic attacks, my mother refused to believe these were strokes, “it will pass” she’d say – and yes, about 12 hours later, they did. I once woke up to the sound of something falling off a table – I wasn’t so much a light sleeper as I was tuned to the familiar sounds of my grandmother’s routine – and I shot out of bed in time to catch her mid-fall during one of these TIAs. She tried to explain to me with her face half-paralyzed that she was trying to take her pills – she made a gesturing sweep with her left hand trying to grasp the pill bottle which I had picked up off the floor, and I knew what was wrong.

We don’t see the elderly in our day-to-day existence. How many elderly do you work with? How about at the store? Think about when you see them, and who you see them with. We grin stupidly at the commercial of the elderly couple still holding wrinkled and age-spotted hands, and say that’s how we want to be when we’re old – but do we really? We admire the men and women who salsa dance and do yoga or parachute out of airplanes, and we coo at them like we do at babies who smile for us, isn’t it precious that these old people haven’t turned into old people.

Suffering is like a fire: Those who sit closest feel the most heat; a picture of a fire gives off no warmth.

I’m about the age my mother was when my grandmother started to have massive coronaries (there were supposedly four). My mother and grandmother had never really lived apart for 40ish years, and once my grandmother “got sick”, my mother then spent another 20 years trying to stop my grandmother from dying – to the extent that she dedicated her entire life, and, some significant parts of mine, to that cause. I, on the other hand, haven’t been living near my mom for the last 20-odd years, and while mom has had several medical issues over the last 15 years, until recently, they’ve not been at the “sudden death”-level scary of a massive coronary. It’s not that I’m in denial, it’s that I ran away to live my life while I could. I got burned by that fire; there’s a place in my soul that is blistered and raw, still.

I don’t want my mother to suffer, and I may have said this before or elsewhere but, this is as good as it’s going to get for her. If she has a string of good days, that’s good. it will never be “better”. It can always get “worse”. I dread worse.

Almost everyone dies of something.

Given the choice, I would like to die of bliss.

Also read The Dying of the Light

I had every intention of blogging every Wednesday.

Well, at least I updated my layout.