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Funerals and Family Get-Togethers
On 7/7/2007

Contributed by: Kristin Wagner on 7/19/2007

Last week we got word from my husband's parents that one of his favorite aunts was in hospice and not expected to survive the weekend. We were shocked-didn't even know she'd been sick. Apparently she went to the doctor with a backache, was diagnosed with bone cancer, and within a very short time went to hospice. She didn't survive the weekend. We drove up to Denver for the service a few days later.

My husband Phil was upset from the time he got the bad news about her illness until we got up to the service. How can it be that vibrant, energetic, Bronco maniac, never-missed-a-game Aunt Rita could have gotten so sick, so suddenly? We'd seen her at Christmas a couple of years ago and she looked like a million bucks. It had been a very hard week for everyone.

Arriving at Rita's service Phil looked around at the gathering of Rita's friends and family. He realized that it had been so long since he'd seen cousins, family friends, and others that he barely recognized most and didn't recognize many at all. We both realized that at this point in life funerals seem to happen more than weddings. When Rich got up to eulogize, Phil and his brother, as well as just about everyone else in our pews, broke into tears. Rita was a very special lady, the youngest of her siblings, and nobody saw this coming.

Afterward when we all went back to Betty and Rich's house for a gathering, we talked about how can it be that the only time we see friends and family these days is at a sad event like a funeral? We're all so busy in life, rushing here and there, getting this done and that done, that we seem to take for granted the people in our lives will be here forever. We realized that time goes by so quickly and we're all getting just a little bit older. We talked about having a get-together for the reason of just BEING together, not for a funeral or even a wedding, but "just because."

We also all realized the aftermath this kind of tragedy leaves behind-packing up the house and personal possessions of the deceased, trying to figure out the finances, the bills, and the paperwork, trying to figure out what to do with her beloved pets? And just exactly what WERE her wishes? Did she want to be cremated or not? Did she have a will? Was it in order? Who in the family has legal authority to make the decisions, financial and other? These are the kinds of things we learn afterward, at $350 an hour for a lawyer, paid for by family members who are in crisis and looking for help, not knowing exactly what to do, and sometimes feeling they're being taken advantage of and they feel they have no other choice.

Nobody likes to think about and talk about the inevitable. Death is the only sure thing in life. Phil and I are checking in with our life insurance agent and revisiting our will to make sure if and when something happens to us, we can make it as easy for the people that love us as possible. We're putting together documentation IMMEDIATELY for our family members so that they may know our final wishes from everything to our pets to how and where we'd like to be placed. We're making sure our organ donor status is in order, knowing that our bodies may provide years of living to someone else. We realize that having a will and a living will as well as other decisions that aren't pleasant to think about need to be done, NOT put off, as soon as possible and updated yearly as life circumstance changes. We may feel like we've got a lot of time left but the fact is, there's a very real possibility we don't, and we have no wish to make it harder on the people we love.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Kristin Wagner

Larkspur , CO

Kristin Wagner has posted 229 stories and 0 comments since joining on 4/18/2007. Kristin Wagner 's average story rating is 5.
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