FootprintsintheWind.com

Met a medical resident who seemed wise beyond his years. He said the conversation is difficult because sometimes the patient rejects the conversation. Is it done as simply as to say, He wouldn’t go any further? Does it absolve your professional and personal responsibility? Or simply apply a salve?

:- Doug.

Who as the responsibility to call this conversation about end of life? Parent or child? Lawyer or client? Doctor or patient? How do we decide? Whoever has the larger view? Whoever can see the harm from not having the conversation? Whoever is most willing? Whoever is most scared of it? This is humanity—whoever has the most love?

:- Doug.

Questions can call us higher.

:- Doug.

Conversation asks these questions: 1. What information can we exchange? 2. What fellow feeling can we exchange? These are the simplest levels where we tend to stop. But there are more: 3. How can we respond? What more is possible now? What can we dream? 4. Who can we invent us to be together? 5. Who can we find and invent our very selves to be?

:- Doug.

Have you ever met anyone else whose work is elder conversations? These conversations run the range from how to live well within the budget and family we have, to how to live the last chapter of our lives. They often get profound. For instance, when it comes your turn to die, where would you want to be, and with whom?

:- Doug.

When we have very little to say, each word becomes both more important and less. More because we have to make each count. Less because the precise words are not important, only the heart of them.

:- Doug.

I call myself an Elder Caring Attorney to remind me to be caring.

:- Doug.

There is room for us as professionals to be more than technicians. There is still a role for us to be compassionate. You can make a difference. You can be kind and caring. Perhaps that’s why you got into this calling.

:- Doug.

In science, what we know and what we think we know is our armor, protecting us from all sorts of attacks. In human dynamics, we have to go in naked. So we avoid contact, thinking it will be uncomfortable. Yet our lack of knowledge, our very vulnerability, is what serves us best, allows us to bring our best and create something entirely new. You have to scrape away the rust before the welding works.

:- Doug.

Doctors, nurses, social workers, all you who assist us in dying well: Think of a time when you did this well. Tell us the story. What made it good? What made it comfortable or got you through the uncomfortable parts? In the alternative, who does this well? What does she or he do? What would make the conversation easier for you to start?

:- Doug.

Human dynamics are actually much more intricate and less well known than rocket science.

:- Doug.

Why do we grow in the direction of our deepest inquiries? Is it because we have opened our cores to a flow (and maybe a splashing) between us, where something novel might be found or created? New responses and relationships are evoked?

:- Doug.

I invite people to find their way.

:- Doug.

Fan the conversation conflagration.

:- Doug.

I am disorganizing our community nervousness around the last chapter.

:- Doug.

Exchange of information &
Exchange of fellow-feeling
Are the smaller flecks of gold
Panned from conversation’s stream
It takes the hard work of love
The mother lode to invent
(Indeed, both meanings here!
To create and
To find)
Our responses
Our who-we-are-together
Our very selves

:- Doug.

Even though this is love at work, don’t think that in this conversation you are only exchanging information. (I love this word invent for two of its meanings: one means create; a second much older meaning sounds strange to our ears: it means to find) You are inventing your responses, your who-we-are-together, and your very selves.

:- Doug.

Conversation solves the knots among us—can even solve the Gordian knot of our medical payments system, which threatens our health. The challenge is these faceless bureaucracies of insurance and government will not, cannot, converse—and our representatives are afraid to open up.

They are afraid of what they might open up—lots of screaming and consternation. Yet if we tiptoe around the issues, nothing will happen. We need a dose of conversational courage…and the skill to open the conversations peacefully and respectfully. If we recognize that others have different points of view, and that we cannot understand them without turning about with them, then we have a chance. On the other hand, without opening the door we have no chance. If we ask the conversational question that goes beyond the ideologies, that directs the conversation to what we can do and what we have in common, then we have a chance. If we work to think through how to bring us together, to think through where we are already together, then we have a chance.

:- Doug.

Listening is trying to hear
Let’s get beyond trying

:- Doug.

End of life is not primarily a medical decision. Nor legal. In this age when acute illnesses have become chronic, it is becoming more and more a personal decision. But people don’t know that they have a choice, or when. That points to a role for us who can see.

:- Doug.

We are in danger when we construct new highways to serve trucks to serve retailers and industry. We are in danger when we change our clocks to serve business. We are in danger when we believe corporations are people. The danger is in switching roles: having people serve their tools. What is the purpose of trucks and retailers and industry, of business, of corporations if not to serve people and the life they live?

:- Doug.

A great deal of the time what we suppose is thinking is instead looking for arguments to support something we once said, or heard another say.

:- Doug.

End of life is not a slag heap, a pile of decaying refuse. Living happens here. How can we best serve life?

:- Doug.