Advance Health Care Directives and My Gratitude to My Parents Who Planned Ahead

Advance Health Care Directive:  With Thanks to My Parents and Heads Up to My Son

            I love the Simpsons episode in which Homer, Marge and the kids go to visit Homer’s dad in an “Old Folks Home,” and after Homer sees his father and the other residents just sitting in front of the TV all day except for rolling their wheel chairs to the table for meals, he begs, “Marge, Kids.  Please, please promise me that when I get old, you’ll put me in an Old Folks Home!”

I’m now reading a book, My Mother, My Son by Dwayne J. Clark, the man who started Aegis Living, the facility where my mother had to go.  His own mother made him and his sisters promise never to put her into any such facility.  I’m so glad that my own parents, though no Homer Simpsons, never made us promise such a thing.

          In fact, among many reasons that I love my parents and am very grateful to them is the fact that they both understood that growing old would not be easy for them or for us, and they made plans accordingly.

          My dad was so intent on NOT having “heroic measures” used if he were in a vegetative state or could not regain consciousness.  He left filled-out forms all over his apartment.

          My mom had an official Advance Health Care Directive made up in 2005, and she acknowledged the possibility that she might have to go into assisted living.  She specified how she wanted to spend her time if she had to go to one—outdoors as much as possible and with friends visiting at the discretion of her partner/companion/housemate Kathy, who was designated as the “Health Care Agent.”  Mom specified that Kathy would make health care decisions for her, as authorized in the document:  “any decision regarding any care, treatment, service, or procedure to maintain, diagnose, or otherwise affect my physical or mental condition.”  I won’t give the full document here, but Kathy’s authority was to take effect when Mom’s primary physician determined that she (Mom) was unable to make her own health care decisions. 

          I’ve written an Advance Health Care directive, too, so my son can be grateful to me.

As for my father, whom I became quite closer to in his later years, he found a place of his own—a retirement home that had the facility for assisted living if it became necessary.  I was so relieved because my father was even more difficult to live with than I am, and when I thought he might be living with my son and me, I said, “I love my dad, and I’d rather die than turn my back on him, so if he wants to live with us, I’m going to kill myself.”

          I didn’t have to do that.  And believe me, my love for my father only increased!