The Whole Death Catalog Read online

  The sidebar on the facing page shows a living will that can be found online. IMPORTANT NOTE: I’m not a lawyer, and I am not suggesting you use this document (it may not even be effective in your jurisdiction); my point is simply to illustrate the kind of thing that’s out there. If you are interested in a living will, do the research or seek professional advice in the state where you live.

  When indicating the kinds of life-prolonging interventions you do not wish to receive, it’s a good idea to be as specific as possible. As Whitman and Glisson put it, “A simple statement of ‘no heroic measures’ is useless. What’s a ‘heroic measure’? The definition of heroic is ‘exhibiting or marked by courage or daring.’ Clearly, that’s not a very helpful statement to a heath care provider.” Ideally, your living will should name the particular treatments you are not interested in: for example, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), respiratory support, or artificially administered food and fluids. At the very least, it should state that you do not wish to be “kept alive with artificial support systems.”

  If you want to be an organ donor, your living will is also the place to say so. You can do

  LIVING WILL

  I, ____________________, am of sound mind, and I voluntarily make this declaration.

  If I become terminally ill or permanently unconscious as determined by my doctor, and if I am unable to participate in decisions regarding my medical care, I intend this declaration to be honored as the expression of my legal right to authorize or refuse medical treatment.

  My desires concerning medical treatment are:

  ________________________________________________________________

  ________________________________________________________________

  ________________________________________________________________

  ________________________________________________________________

  My family, the medical facility, and any doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel involved in my care shall have no civil or criminal liability for following my wishes as expressed in this declaration.

  I may change my mind at any time by communicating in any manner that this declaration does not reflect my wishes.

  Photostatic copies of this document, after it is signed and witnessed, shall have the same legal force as the original document.

  I sign this document after careful consideration. I understand its meaning and I accept its consequences.

  Dated: ____________ Signed:_____________________________

  (Your signature)

  ____________________________________

  ____________________________________

  (Address)

  STATEMENT OF WITNESSES

  We sign below as witnesses. This declaration was signed in our presence. This declarant appears to be of sound mind, and to be making this designation voluntarily, without duress, fraud, or undue influence.

  _____________________ ________________________________

  (Print Name) (Signature of Witness)

  ____________________________________

  ____________________________________

  (Address)

  _____________________ ________________________________

  (Print Name) (Signature of Witness)

  ____________________________________

  ____________________________________

  (Address)

  RECOMMENDED READING

  Whitman and Glisson’s plainspoken and highly informative Wants, Wishes, and Wills, which covers every imaginable end-of-life situation you are likely to face, is pretty much the only book you’ll need on this subject.

  For those dealing with the flip side of the situation—that is, issues that heirs have to cope with—some good books are Dan Rottenberg, The Inheritor’s Handbook (Fireside, 2000); Ann Perry, The Wise Inheritor (Broadway, 2003); and Angie Epting Morris, The Settlement Game: How to Settle an Estate Peacefully and Fairly (Voyages Press, 2006).

  “Who Gets Grandma’s

  Yellow Pie Plate?”

  As any estate lawyer will tell you, soÏme of the ugliest battles fought over a dead person’s property have to do not with valuable real estate or large sums of inherited money but with items that would fetch only a paltry sum on eBay Families are less likely to be torn apart by disputes over Dad’s will than by arguments over who gets to keep his old box of fishing tackle or his 1950s Kodak Brownie camera.

  Items like these are technically known as “nontitled property”—personal belongings of such negligible monetary value that they’re not even mentioned in a will. Often, however, it’s precisely these things that possess the greatest sentimental value—which is just another way of saying that they become symbolically charged objects onto which all kinds of potentially explosive feelings and unresolved family issues are projected. For that reason, dividing the personal stuff that belonged to a departed loved one can easily become, in the words of Wynne A. Whitman and Shawn D. Glisson, “a tinderbox of emotion.”

  To keep your survivors from engaging in nasty fights over who gets what when you’re gone, Whitman and Glisson offer the following recommendations:

  Don’t make oral promises. Make a written list of who gets what and be as specific as possible in describing the items (as Whitman and Glisson suggest, “instead of ‘my ring,’ write ‘my ring with two sapphires and one diamond set in platinum’”).

  Alternatively, you can attach little tags or stickers to your heirlooms, indicating their intended recipients.

  Think about distributing your special belongings while you’re still alive. This will prevent people from fighting over your possessions when you’re gone. You will also get to reap the benefits of their gratitude.

  If there’s stuff you think no one wants, get rid of it. That way, your survivors will be spared the dreary task of clearing out your garage, basement, or attic crawl space of all the junk you’ve accumulated over a lifetime.

  A highly recommended resource to help with this task is the Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate? Workbook. Produced by the University of Minnesota Extension Service, this ninety-five-page guide supplies all the tools you’ll need to pass on your personal belongings in a fair and sensitive way. It’s available online at Amazon or can be ordered directly from the extension service by mail, e-mail, or phone:

  University of Minnesota Extension

  Service Distribution Center

  20 Coffey Hall

  1420 Eckles Avenue

  St. Paul, MN 55108-6068

  E-mail orders: [email protected]

  Phone orders: 800-876-8636

  Wacky Wills

  In the summer of 2007, Leona Helmsley—widow of New York City real estate mogul Harry Helmsley and a woman so universally detested that she was dubbed the “Queen of Mean”—went to her final reward. When her last will and testament was made public a few weeks later, its provisions appeared to confirm her reputation for egregious behavior. Two of her grandchildren were entirely cut out of her $4 billion fortune, while the single largest bequest—$12 million—was left to her beloved pooch, an eight-year-old Maltese named Trouble.

  While the tabloids had a field day with the revelation (“Leona’s Dog Gets Her Paws on $12 Mil,” blared the Daily News), Helmsley was far from the first person to leave a fortune to a pet. Indeed, there have been scores of bizarre bequests throughout the decades. Here are ten of the wackiest:

  DEATH DEFINITION: Holographic Will

  THOUGH IT SOUNDS KIND OF FUTURISTIC—LIKE SOMETHING FROM A SCI-FI MOVIE WHERE OBJECTS materialize in three-dimensional form, the way Princess Leia does at the start of the original Star Wars movie when her image pops out of R2D2, pleading “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope!"—a holographic will is actually (and less spectacularly) a will entirely handwritten, dated, and signed by the testator (i.e., the person making the will).

  Since they aren’t witnessed and notarized, holographic wills are not recognized in every state and experts advise against leaving t
hem. Sometimes, however, a person has no choice. In 1948, for example, a farmer named Cecil Harris got trapped beneath his tractor and carved his last will and testament into the fender. The fender was eventually accepted as a valid legal document.

  Known for his love of practical jokes, Canadian lawyer Charles Millar (d. 1926) left a will full of prankish provisions. Antigambling crusaders and teetotalers were given shares in racetracks and breweries, three men who detested one another were bequeathed joint lifetime tenancy of a vacation home in Jamaica, and a huge cash bounty was offered to the Montreal woman who produced the most babies in the ten years following Millar’s death.

  In 1871, a hatter named S. Sanborn bequeathed his body to the Harvard Medical School for research purposes with one small proviso: that his skin be flayed and made into a drum that would be used to play “Yankee Doodle” at dawn on Bunker Hill every June 17.

  Convinced that he would be reincarnated, wealthy Vermont tanner John Bowman left a $50,000 trust fund when he died in 1891 for the maintenance of his twenty-one-room mansion so that he could move right back into his home when he returned. He also instructed his servants to prepare his dinner nightly in case he was hungry when he showed up.

  When famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen died in 1978, he left a trust fund of $10,000 for the perpetual care of his dummy, Charlie McCarthy.

  In accordance with his last wishes, the cremated ashes of “Steady” Ed Headrick—inventor of the Frisbee—were incorporated into limited-edition memorial Frisbees “so that he could fly.”

  In 1862, Henry Budd—a British gentleman with an inordinate loathing of facial hair—left £200,000 in a trust for his two sons on the condition that they never grow moustaches.

  Following the mysterious disappearance of reclusive copper miner and prospector James Kidd in 1949, a handwritten will was discovered in which he bequeathed nearly a quarter of a million dollars to anyone who could provide “some scientific proof of a soul of the human body which leaves at death,” preferably in the form of a photograph.

  Pennsylvanian Robert Allan Miller was so fed up with the traffic snarl in his hometown of Bethlehem that when he died in 1995, he bequeathed an annual $5,000 reward to the police officer who wrote the most tickets for double parking.

  Upon her premature death at age thirty-seven in 1977, Beverly Hills socialite Sandra Ilene West—widow of a Texas oil millionaire—was buried, as per her last wishes, in her 1964 powder blue Ferrari, the seat reclined at a comfortable angle.

  In 1897, an Englishman named Norman Earnest Digweed directed that his estate of £26,000 be placed in trust for eighty years for Jesus Christ should he return within that time.

  O death, O death, won’t you spare me over till another year?

  —Traditional American folk song

  Tending to the

  Terminally Ill

  Back in nineteenth-century America, when the average life expectancy was significantly shorter than it is today and people died at home, families knew how to make a loved one’s final hours as comfortable as possible. Nowadays, when the terminally ill are generally consigned to hospitals, the average person has little or no idea of how to care for a dying relative—or even how to recognize the active onset of death.

  If one of your family members has chosen to pass his or her final days at home, here are the six common signs of imminent death and the recommended measures to make the dying process easier:

  Victorian deathbed scene.

  SIGN: Changes in skin color and temperature. As circulation decreases and less blood reaches the extremities, the hands and feet will turn purple or blue-purple and feel cool to the touch. The fingernail beds will likewise turn bluish. Legs will become blotchy or mottled.

  CAREGIVING MEASURE: Use a blanket or some other covering (like a sheet) to keep the person warm.

  SIGN: Decrease in appetite and thirst. Dying people no longer feel like eating or drinking and find it increasingly hard to swallow.

  CAREGIVING MEASURE: Don’t try to force your loved one to eat or drink. Keep a glass of water on hand with a straw. Keep your loved one’s mouth moist with a sponge, cloth, or spray bottle. Use Chapstick or other balm on the lips.

  SIGN: Changes in breathing. Respiration becomes highly irregular. There may be shallow breaths followed by deep breaths, several rapid breaths followed by several seconds of no breathing at all, panting, gurgling, or exceptionally noisy breathing caused by the congestion of the lungs.

  CAREGIVING MEASURE: Try raising the head of the bed or repositioning your loved one to ease labored breathing. Let fresh air into the room. Medications prescribed by your doctor may also help.

  SIGN: Incontinence. Loss of bladder and bowel control. Urine may be darkly discolored.

  CAREGIVING MEASURE: Keep your loved one clean and dry. Use incontinence pads or a catheter. Change his or her position every few hours.

  SIGN: Restlessness, confusion, agitation. The person may jerk around in bed, twitch, or pluck at the bedclothes. He or she may not recognize family members and may experience hallucinations and delusions, such as visits from relatives who have already died.

  CAREGIVING MEASURE: Speak gently in short, simple phrases. Remind the person of the date and time and the names of the people in the room.

  SIGN: Loss of speech. The dying person no longer speaks spontaneously and ceases to respond to questions.

  CAREGIVING MEASURE: Though a dying person may appear comatose, he or she may still be able to hear you. Always act under the assumption that the patient knows what is going on, however unresponsive he seems. Talk soothingly while holding his hand.

  RECOMMENDED RESOURCE

  For people taking care of terminally ill relatives at home, the Hospice Foundation of America has published an excellent manual, The Dying Process: A Guide for Care-givers. Developed with the participation of various physicians, hospice experts, and grief therapists, this twenty-four-page booklet covers all aspects of the subject, from the physical symptoms of dying to pain management and psychological concerns. It can be downloaded at www.hospicefoundation.org/endOfLifeInfo/documents/ general_manual.pdf. Hardcover copies can also be purchased by contacting the Hospice Foundation of America at 1621 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009, 800-854-3402.

  The goal of all life is death.

  —SIGMUND FREUD

  “Deathing”

  Up until the relatively recent past, giving birth was called “delivery.” Then, sometime around the 1970s, another, more touchy-feely word came into vogue: “birthing.” Given our society’s fondness for such jargon, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with an equivalent term for the process of dying.

  That distinction belongs to Anya Foos-Graber, who has devised a technique she calls “deathing” (a word that even her ardent admirers concede is “somewhat strange-sounding”). A blend of Eastern spiritual practices—especially Tibetan Buddhism—and up-to-date NDE (near-death experience) research, “deathing,” in Foos-Graber’s words, “offers a way to free up dying people so they can utilize the highest potential of the transition called death and experience it as a peak moment.” Her method is set forth in her book Deathing: An Intelligent Alternative for the Final Moment of Life (Nicolas-Hays, 1989), which includes a step-by-step guide for mastering the technique, along with contrasting case histories illustrating the differences between mere run-of-the mill dying and spiritually enlightened deathing.

  Not everybody will relate to Foos-Graber’s New Agey approach, which is heavy on concepts such as “spontaneous unfoldment,” “harnessing the etheric body,” and “entering into the effulgence of the Light with total awareness of the transcendental nature of our being.” Still, insofar as her book grows out of the modern death awareness movement that seeks to restore dignity, meaning, and acceptance to the act of dying, it is a worthwhile project. (We just wish she had coined a less clunky word to describe it.)

  Quality of Death:

  The Hospice Experience

&nbs
p; Up until the first decade of the twentieth century, fully 85 percent of Americans died in the comfort of their homes and the company of their loved ones. Because medicine was still, comparatively speaking, in the dark ages, a hospital could do little for the desperately ill and only poor people went there to die.

  Today, the situation is almost exactly the reverse, with the vast majority of Americans dying in hospitals. “Progress” accounts for this dramatic change. If an acutely ill patient wants the latest in advanced medical treatment, a hospital is the only place to find it. Moreover, because Americans tend not to stay rooted in one place, old people often end up living far away from their relatives and longtime friends and have to rely on paid professionals for end-of-life care.

  The net result of these developments is that while the quality of life has been improving for most Americans over the past hundred years, the quality of death has undergone a corresponding decline. We might enjoy luxuries that earlier generations could only dream about—from wall-size TVs to thumbnail-size music players to all-inclusive Caribbean resort vacations—but we also face the dreary (if not terrifying) prospect of dying alone in a faceless medical institution, hooked up to machines and attended by overworked and dispassionate strangers.

  In response to this dismal trend, the past few decades have witnessed the growth of a movement whose goal is not to try to ward off death through radical medical intervention, but to provide humane and compassionate care for the incurable—to alleviate the suffering and restore the dignity of the dying. This movement is known as hospice.