You can start End-of-Life Planning proactively, or reactively. Sometime the choice is unfortunately not yours.
You can do it proactively if like me, if no doctor has told you that you will die in X months. Not yet at least. I still would like to remain ready for that eventuality (well, if an accident killed me then if it happened after step 7 “Live - Enjoy Your Bucket List!” of my previous blog, “End of Life List of Seven”, I’d be dead laughing...)
Or you can do it reactively After the doctor hands you the bad news. That’s when step 1, “Resolve - Make a Planning Resolution” of my previous blog becomes important. You would go through some stages of grief after learning of that news about your end of life. People have defined those stages (4? 7? 9?) in various ways. Let’s take the definition Dr Phil used in his writing. The four stages of grief he refers to are – Shock, Denial, Anger, and Resolution (according to the Christian Counseling Group’s website http://christiancounselinggroup.net/resources/stages_of_grief.pdf). Resolution is about “Feeling like there is a way past the grief, an end to the sadness. You may say to yourself, ‘I will get through this.’”
Unless you come to this fourth stage, you will not be able to start End of Life Planning in any productive way because the resident shock, denial, and anger will cloud your thought process. Only when you have resolutely settled down in this fourth stage, you will regain your rational thinking. Planning as a necessity will make meaning in your mind, and you will start looking for what to do till the inevitable happens.
Of course, I am not discounting miracles when I say that the inevitable would happen. It might not. This is not just a ’good news’ statement. I have seen miracles happen in my life. I have seen two cases where people became well after doctors gave them a few days to live. One used an alternative medicine, the other used some very mundane powders available in grocery stores. For those of you who are religious, I didn’t consider these religious miracles. For the atheists amongst you, I didn’t understand what happened. The point is, there is always that ray of hope.
Anyway, I am planning my End of Life proactively. I am going to assume that you are either doing it the same way, or if you have had to start the planning reactively, then you are in the fourth stage of grief – you have made a planning Resolution.
