FootprintsintheWind.com

Entangling, enlarging, engendering
This is conversation

:- Doug.

If you think conversation is about transferring information from person to person, you’re missing out on four-fifths of its magic.

:- Doug.

I work on people’s wills—their will to care well for one another in and out of nursing homes, in end of life, in families.

:- Doug.

In family conferences conclude by going around the table giving each person 60 seconds to say what our direction ought to be.

:- Doug.

My strength is the long conference…so that we can arrive at more workable options.

:- Doug.

If God has indicated “I want this one,” what is the purpose of our actively fighting the summons?

:- Doug.

If it is wrong morally to shorten life, is it as wrong to lengthen? Is it wrong morally to do inadvertent violence to one dying or to his or her family?

:- Doug.

Conversation goes beyond communication
we can use it to process:
circulating
ventilating
even generating
if we are willing
if we invite

:- Doug.

In probate, I am getting your son or daughter a license from a judge to exercise the court’s authority over your finances to settle them and make them final and complete. There are versions with and without close supervision. But it is your kids who call the shots. They decide how soon it is done and at what level of cost.

:- Doug.

The meaning of life being living and life being larger than any one, we therefore get our life’s most fundamental meaning from serving something in life larger than ourselves.

:- Doug.

Today we have a place to
Breathe for you
Eat for you
& Keep you safely
Medicated
—Everything you’d ever
Want—O my!

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1475

To invent our humanity—
To find how we are alike and entwined
To create more ways of these—
If you are to be truly human
Seek entwining

Please pass it on.

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There is no natural reluctance
To converse of death and dying
‘Tis the work of culture—ours

:- Doug.

Caring is action; care is done to a thing. Caring is also shared, moves among us.

:- Doug.

If the meaning of life is life, then how much is in the completion of it?

:- Doug.

With the long tail illnesses we now have, we may not be able to choose our own deaths, but we certainly can deny our loved ones a gentle easy death. We subject them to hours and days of suffering and violence. Through ignorance.

:- Doug.

Every one is holy.

:- Doug.

Crisis medical sounds like a good term instead of emergency medical. Its root meaning is life and death decision point, and its connotation is people running around under emotional pressure and distress to do or not do something. So it is perhaps the term I should choose more often.

:- Doug.

Helping a client who does not want to be helped, or who is otherwise stubborn? This approach is useful, I think, as a first try: 1. Foremost, do not try to sell any outcome or value; 2. Move toward specific scenarios and wishes, preferably as a sliding scale; 3. Introduce idea that it is OK to change one’s mind.

What is most important to you now? Leave me alone or health? Being with people you like or being in a place you like? 17 Caring Continua. How can we choose for you if you are in a crisis? Is it ever OK for you to change your mind?

:- Doug.

Care: technically proficient but detached.

Caring: find what the client values and seeking engagement in bringing that to fruition.

:- Doug.

To counter something you don’t like, contribute something you’d like to see.

:- Doug.

Communicate your vision to everyone, inviting them to translate that vision into words and actions.

:- Doug.

You’re dying. I’m dying. There, we have said it. We are all dying. Some sooner than others. It is a matter of degree, of timing. It is a sure thing. Let us be kind to one another. So let’s talk about how we treat each other. While we’re dying.

:- Doug.