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My siblings and they were very angry with me for wanting my mom to share her wishes for her end of life

By Susan
Posted on

I had the conversation with my parent.

We are going to review our living wills and meet with our two 30-some year old children to share our wishes. Difficult, maybe, but such a relief for them in the future to not have to make those decisions.
 I am the oldest of 8 children and my dad at age 78 had aggressive melanoma that had metastasized to his lungs, brain, and abdomen. My mother died 6 years before my dad of metastasized breast cancer, and I was the one that wanted to have a living will and end of life wishes before she passed. This caused extreme problems with the rest of my siblings and they were very angry with me for wanting my mom to share her wishes for her end of life.

At the end of her life, my mom told me that my dad had a feeding tube inserted in my grandmother, his mother, and she never wanted that to happen to her. Thus, why I wanted to have this discussion with my mom and my siblings. Although we never had the discussion as a group, I was able to work with my mom and dad to develop my mom’s wishes for the end of her life and we were able to make those decisions based on my mom’s wishes.

When my dad was in the last stages of his cancer, he needed surgery, and the surgeon came out from the surgery to give us the options before he proceeded. Sadly, the 8 of us children had never discussed this with our dad, and 5 decided to go forward with the procedure and 3 of us wanted to let my dad go. Needless to say, it was not worth fighting for the 3 of us. My dad died anyway 3 weeks later.

Based on these two experiences, now at age 57 and my husband at age 59, we are going to review our living wills and meet with our two 30-some year old children to share our wishes. Difficult, maybe, but such a relief for them in the future to not have to make those decisions; they will be made for them, with how we would like our end of our lives to be. They will not have to debate or disagree.

Thanks for sharing the news report and the website with me, and encouraging us to have these conversations earlier rather than later.

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