Live Responsibly, Die Thoughtfully

How to Navigate the Rest of Your Life with Intention and Grace

(an excerpt)

Johanna Munson

 

 

INTRODUCTION: A Responsible Exit

My mother died irresponsibly.

I know that may sound harsh. But the truth is, if my mother had taken steps to die thoughtfully, I believe that my father, my sisters, and I would have suffered a whole lot less than we did.

Losing my mother at age 74 was devastating. We lived in the same town and had finally gotten to a place where we thoroughly enjoyed our relationship. I was looking forward to many more years of simply spending time with her and my dad.

I was heartbroken, and so were my sisters. My father was a wreck. Looking back, I wish things could have been different in so many ways.

I wish she hadn’t died, of course.

But I also wish that she had taken care of things before she died. That she had died thoughtfully.

If only she had…

The possibilities haunted me for a decade.

***

I vividly remember the day we left the hospital after my mother died. The July sun was bright and cheerful, in stark contrast to the dark despair we were feeling. We walked in numb silence to the parking lot, and the reality that my mom would never walk with us again hit hard. I couldn’t even look at my sisters, much less my dad, without bursting into tears. The “what ifs” began to cycle through my mind, and the guilt and regret wasted no time in rearing their ugly heads.

We had only five weeks from her diagnosis to her death. How does that even happen?! And why didn’t she ever talk about what she wanted? By the time she ended up in the ICU, it was too late; all we could do was take turns singing childhood songs to her, hoping she knew we were there for her in the only way possible at that time.

The songs covered the awkwardness that was developing between me and my sisters. We were already disagreeing about what route to take as her sudden decline worsened. Our dad didn’t join us in singing as he was in shock: how could his beloved Faith be leaving him?

The shock of losing a loved one is to be expected.

But what most of us don’t expect is the shock that comes with not knowing what to do next, especially when we end up fighting with our loved ones over “what she would have wanted.”

It would have been so much better if she had told us what she wanted.

My sisters and I ended up turning against each other when what we needed most was to turn toward each other instead.

***

Fast forward 12 years, to February 9, 2019, the day my dad died.

Walking home through the unusually deep snow with my younger sister by my side, the feelings of peace and acceptance were forefront. We knew that we had done our utmost to accompany our dad through his last weeks, doing our best to follow his wishes. The tears would come as well, but they were tears of pure grief, untinged by feelings of remorse. He had lived responsibly and died thoughtfully, and the contrast with my mom’s death couldn’t have been stronger.

Very few of us actually want to talk about death and dying, and I was in that place myself after my mom’s death. My dad grieved deeply for several years, and as he came out of that dark place, he started wanting to talk about his own end-of-life decisions. I resisted, still triggered by the experience with my mom.

I couldn’t even think about losing my dad.

Reality intruded, however, and I was called upon to act as his medical and financial powers of attorney. He experienced a variety of health challenges, and we had deep and meaningful conversations about what was to happen next. The impact of being able to talk about what truly mattered to him, along with getting his affairs in order ahead of time, formed the foundation for creating what I now call the Living Responsibly Roadmap for fostering peace of mind at a time when life is vulnerable to chaos.

It’s not like he said the quiet part out loud (“my wife didn’t take responsibility”), but in retrospect, I can see that the feeling of helplessness and the trauma that he experienced made him determined to break the mold and do it differently himself.

The Living Responsibly Roadmap has 4 parts that are intentionally designed to help us work through the most unavoidable event of our lives. That event, one that hopefully comes later rather than sooner, is the fact that we are all going to pass on someday.

But what do we do in the meantime?

How do we live responsibly?

And perhaps, even more critically (if we are to consider the feelings of our loved ones), what would you have to do now to ensure that you die responsibly?

The Living Responsibly Roadmap helps us remove the blinders and make decisions we don’t want to think about making. It reveals an actual truth: None of us wants to die, leaving our loved ones burdened by decisions we could have made for them.

You are not alone in wanting to avoid thinking about this stuff! Very few of us want to spend time thinking about this inevitability.

And yet… who among us wants to inflict more suffering?

What makes us think that if we ignore it, things will work themselves out? Is it fair to tell ourselves that once we die, we won’t have to deal with the heartache (and mess) of those we leave behind?

Is that really how we want to let things play out?

Wouldn’t you rather step out of denial and into a place of responsibility, where we show how much we care by taking care of our own affairs?  That’s what it means to die thoughtfully.

Remember that awkward part of science class where you learned about the birds and the bees? I’m willing to bet there was no corresponding talk about the other end of the life cycle. We are not taught how to address illness, aging, dying, and death; the focus is all on youth and vitality.

In this book, I’ll share my Living Responsibly Roadmap that empowers you to embrace your mortality and see it as a pathway to living fully now. I’ll introduce my signature program, Experience Peace of Mind Now, where you’re guided to create a personal roadmap that leads to peace of mind for you and those you love. You’ll stop worrying so much about others because you’ll know that they’ll be taken care of when the unimaginable happens.

What’s unique about my approach to tackling the often-daunting list of action items others tell us need to be checked off (often referred to as “getting our affairs in order”)? I do have a checklist that we use to identify our priorities, but we start by looking at who and what matters to us and how the way our life is going now reflects that (or not!). The checklist covers three areas that I call the Heart, Soul, and Mind of planning.

And there’s so much more. You’ll learn how to have deeply meaningful conversations on challenging topics, a skill that will serve you in many areas of life.

You’ll deepen your relationships with yourself and others.

Imagine finding joy in every day, even with the ups and downs of modern life, confident that you are making the most of your “one wild and precious life” (from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day”).

Are you intrigued but still hesitant to venture into this unexplored territory? I get it. As I said, we’re not necessarily taught how to navigate these pathways. Sometimes it is forced upon us when we get an unexpected diagnosis, or a loved one suddenly needs our help. It’s a struggle to deal with the emotional and physical fallout if we don’t have any planning in place.

But if we stay stuck here, we forego the opportunity to expand the depth of our being beyond where we are now, and we won’t reap the benefits of inner exploration.

Take a moment to consider these questions:

Who am I when I have to let go of  “doing”? (Getting old or experiencing severe illness means a whole lot of letting go!)

How can I prepare so that I am ready when that time comes? (Life gets busy and we think we can put off that task.)

What if I’m scared? (That’s normal, and I’m here to help dispel your fears.)

Leaving those questions unanswered means missing out on a fundamental piece of being human. I am passionate about engaging with you at this level, and I am so deeply grateful to my parents and the lessons I learned from them that put me on the path to becoming a Peace of Mind Guide. I have personally experienced the peace of mind that planning provides, and I wish that everyone could feel that sense of ease.

You’re not the only one if you’ve never considered that there is more to estate planning than creating a will or trust, deciding who gets what, and maybe getting a Health Care Directive in place. Between not knowing who to turn to and potential costs, it’s no wonder people put this off! While 64% of Americans believe it’s important to have a will, less than 40% of people over the age of 40 have actually put one in place (caring.com survey).

To go beyond that and pay attention to who and what we care about and how to live and die responsibly so that we leave this lifetime with as few regrets as possible: now that’s transformative!

Do you want to continue to go about your daily life tied to the ways of thinking that keep you from living the full life you want? Feeling like the other shoe could drop at any time but unwilling to take action? Missing out on connections, fulfillment, and deeply knowing who you are?

Why would you want to give up on all that potential joy?!

Believe me, I was severely depressed and in a horrible place after my mom died. I felt like I had lost so much; the conversations, the experiences, even the disagreements. It makes sense, right? I expected that she would live until at least 91, the age that her mom died. Her death gave me the gift of awareness, but acceptance of my own mortality didn’t come until I walked alongside my dad through his final days. In the next chapter, I’ll share how that attitude developed and how it got me to this place where I can bring you along with me through the Living Responsibly Roadmap.

It’s time to take responsibility for your life and your eventual death. Avoidance of the latter will only continue to impede the former.

But it doesn’t have to.

Let’s find out why.

 

THE LIVING RESPONSIBLY ROADMAP

I had dropped by the yoga studio to make arrangements for my next workshop series, and coming out the door was a woman I’ll call Jennifer. I’d crossed paths with her several times over the last 6 months, and every time she’d say “Oh I need to talk with you, but I’m just not ready!”

This from an 80-year-old widow, living on her own!

She’d told me she had nothing in place: no will or advance directive, and two beloved cats that her nearby daughter had already said she couldn’t take in. She was in denial at the age of 80, unwilling to say the hard part out loud: I don’t want to think about my own death.

If you don’t choose to live responsibly, you will die irresponsibly.

This is what it looks like to live responsibly and die thoughtfully in the context of my framework:

• We make a conscious choice to lean into the reality of our mortality.
• We utilize that awareness to bring our lives into alignment with our core values.
• We put a roadmap in place for now until the end, thereby giving us the best chance of dying without regrets.

Dying thoughtfully is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves and our loved ones, even though the mere thought of dying makes us want to turn away from the topic entirely.

Here’s why: The death of a loved one is sure to cause pain and suffering for those still living. But what no one wants is to have what happens in the days or weeks leading up to their death add to that suffering, which is exactly what happened to our family when my mother got ill so suddenly.

No one in my family could agree on the decisions that had to be made after my mother’s diagnosis and sudden decline, and that created a divide among family members. After her death, we struggled to put together a memorial service that would do justice to her incredible artistic spirit. I know my mother would not have wanted that, but she also failed to prevent it by not having made those decisions herself, long before she died, when she was of sound mind and spirit.

Whenever I explain this to someone, they immediately experience a shift in perspective.

Instead of anticipating the grief and suffering their death will cause, they envision the possibilities for connection and fulfillment that being responsible now provides.

I’ve felt that pain and it took me to a dark place. Not only had I lost my mom, but my dad was in a state of shock and disbelief and needed a lot of support at the same time that I was suffering. My kids saw their grandmother once at the hospital and the next thing they knew, she was gone. Trying to explain death to a 9- and 12-year-old complicated matters further.

Her unexpected diagnosis of acute leukemia was such a surprise.  She'd always been a go-getter, active in many organizations (including volunteering with hospice). There were only five weeks from diagnosis to her end of life, leaving us all in shock, and no one knew what she would have wanted before there were no more choices to be made. We'd never had the conversations that could have brought us all together at the end, instead of causing enormous strain. Irresponsible? I would say yes.

It was so different with my dad, as he took that experience to heart and tried to initiate conversations with me about his choices. I resisted at first as I was still feeling deep regrets about the way my mom’s end of life had gone. I was putting responsibility on myself for something that was hers to manage.

It became obvious as he aged, however, that putting all the pieces in place and laying out a hoped-for roadmap was a huge gift that he could give my sisters and me. The lessons I learned formed the foundation for my Living Responsibly Roadmap. Think about it: wouldn’t you rest easier, knowing that you’ve gained this awareness and that it can impact not only you but all those who care about you?

I know, death is a taboo topic in dominant American culture. Moreover, the human brain is wired for survival and shouts “No, don’t go there!”

We think that if we avoid talking about it, we won’t have to deal with it. Or that talking about it will make it happen sooner. Or that we don’t need to do anything about it because we’ll be dead.

If you have looked into planning for it, maybe you purchased a binder that has tabs for each subject, and now it’s sitting in the drawer, still blank. Or you went to a presentation and picked up some business cards, but tossed those a week or two later.

Without the foundational steps of my framework, you’ll likely put off taking action again. The result? Those around you won’t know what to do should you experience illness or death unexpectedly. And worst of all? You’re likely to wind up living a life that is so much smaller than what is possible when you take full responsibility for both living and dying.

Have you experienced the death of a relative or close friend, where little preparation was done and incredible strain was placed on everyone? That might inspire you to examine your situation and think “I don’t want that to happen to those that I love!” Following this roadmap will spare your loved ones that awful experience.

Or maybe you saw the opposite situation, where the end of life was a sacred event and community was created by the passing. It led to deeper connections and a profound awareness that life is precious. You want this for yourself and don’t want to waste any more time, but are not sure how to proceed. Deciding to be responsible in both life and death is key.

Of course, you don’t want to make your passing even more difficult for your loved ones. If you did, you wouldn’t have picked up this book in the first place.

Who wouldn’t want to ease the path for those who will grieve for you after you’re gone? And it’s not just about those around you: imagine the sense of accomplishment that comes with tackling such a critical yet often-ignored topic. The bonus is that you get to reap the rewards of this expanded awareness of the precious nature of life.

Note: The Living Responsibly Roadmap is not for you if you’re thrilled with your life as it is now, you think you have plans in place, and you don’t see any need to expand your understanding of what is possible.

Granted, it’s not easy to venture into this territory. Imagining a world without us in it can strike terror into the bravest of us. Missing out on important milestones, not achieving the goals we set, or enduring hardship because of illness are all legitimate fears. It takes guided focus to develop your capacity to get beyond the anxiety to a peaceful place where you have a clear roadmap to follow.

In that peaceful place, you’ll understand that this is the best gift you can give your loved ones, and yourself! You’ll see clearly what matters to you the most and will know what steps to take to create a life that brings you joy, connection, and serenity.

There are four steps to my Living Responsibly Roadmap, and it’s critical to take sufficient time to address each one.

Step 1: Conquering Avoidance

“I don’t want to think about my death.”

Does reading that sentence ring true?

It’s no wonder that it does. Our brains are focused on keeping us alive, so even the thought of dying is an existential threat.

It is fundamental to acknowledge that this is a topic that we are reluctant to address, but our thoughts tend towards the following:

• I hate thinking about the time leading up to my passing.
• I don’t want to think about me dying and my children/partner/siblings/parents having to live on without me.
• I don’t even know what to think about “what’s next” after death.
• I avoid talking about it because I’m scared that will make it happen.
• Occasions that should be happy are clouded by my fears.
• I don’t take actions that could lead me to a fulfilling life because the risks are too great.

Do any of these resonate with you?

Whether it’s what loved ones will do without me, or how I’ll get through the end of my life, or some other concern, it’s easier in the short term to avoid the subject altogether. But that can lead to unwanted outcomes for you and those around you.

 “The terror of death is the underlying power that drives all human behavior.” ~Ernest Becker

Step 2: Overcoming Resistance to Our Mortality

“I am going to die someday.”

It is in the nature of all living things to die. When I can overcome my resistance to that reality, I gain the freedom to be fully present in my life. Making decisions becomes easier because I am aware of the fact that my time is limited. If not now, when?

Opposition to this unfortunate fact is deeply embedded in our subconscious brain, however. Thousands of years of human experience rewarded those who were able to stay alive, and our ancestors did that by seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and conserving energy. Not much room for talking about death and dying in there!

When you stop fighting the inevitable, however, you start to feel some freedom, believe it or not. Which would you rather experience: a constricted life where you’re not taking risks, or one of expansion because you recognize that your time here is limited?

“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.” ~Buddha

Step 3: Becoming Accountable

“How do I want to live my life now so that I have no regrets later?”

Of course, no one wants to get to the end of their life and feel regret, but how often do we take steps to ensure we die without deep remorse for not living responsibly and dying thoughtfully?

Consider asking yourself these questions also:

• What do I have to do now so that I can rest assured that my loved ones will be taken care of?
• How can I make my wishes clear?

And this question, perhaps the most important one of all:

• How do I hold myself accountable for what I say I want?

This isn’t only about taking care of your loved ones; it’s about taking care of you. And when you take responsibility for the things that matter to you, you end up taking care of the ones you love.

When you take personal responsibility for living your life now in ways that ensure both you and your loved ones are taken care of, everyone benefits. You get to drop the weight of worrying about them when you’re no longer here, and they understand your choices. You’re living your life consistent with the values that matter most to you.

We routinely take on responsibility for others’ lives, so why is it often challenging to transform our own? We may raise kids, we try to satisfy our boss, we are often called upon to ease the path for a partner or friend. When we understand the impact of our choices (by the way, avoidance is a choice too) we can shape our destiny. No more blaming others or making excuses. Once you’re clear that you’re taking responsibility for your life, you become the architect of your future.

Identifying our values provides a solid foundation for making all kinds of decisions and allows us to take ownership of our lives.

“Have the courage to build your life around what is really most important to you.” ~Joshua Becker

 

STEP 4: Living Responsibly: The life you want BEFORE and AFTER you die

Imagine yourself here: you’re no longer wasting energy resisting the fact of your mortality, and you’re ready to explore what living life fully means for you.

You no longer live with the worry that your loved ones won’t be taken care of after you’re gone. Picture them knowing how to support you as you age, prepared for emergencies because of the conversations you’ve had. Some of us are “solo agers” and need to plan for a circle of caring. What a relief it would be to have that in place!

You’ve made your healthcare and other choices before it’s an emergency situation, resulting in peace of mind for you and those around you. And when the end comes, it’s not a disaster; it’s a sacred event.

It may seem counterintuitive that focusing on your end of life can completely transform your present situation, but these are some of the results my clients have had:

One woman was still working at age 70, and through completing this process, realized that she could retire and travel as she had always dreamed.

I worked with a couple, leading busy lives with teenage daughters and facing an empty nest, who recommitted to their partnership as they fully took in that life can change in an instant and now is all they have.

Communication was enhanced in another partnership as they overcame differences of opinion. Now they have a structure for handling difficult topics!

You’re accustomed to taking responsibility for so many areas of living and take great pride in that. But you probably haven’t thought about the costs of dying irresponsibly.

• Dying “irresponsibly” means you didn’t take care of yourself (and your loved ones) when you were still living and had the opportunity to put your affairs in order.
• Dying “irresponsibly” means you’d “rather not think about it,” even if it causes tension within the family before and after you’re gone.
• Dying “irresponsibly” means you fail to consider the pain you leave behind.
• Dying “irresponsibly” means you create unnecessary suffering for your loved ones.
• Dying “irresponsibly” means you don’t get to live your life to the fullest extent possible right now.

The first step in learning how to live, and die, responsibly, lies on the next page.

Come along with me and let’s take a deeper look at each step. I promise you, it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, there’s no doom and gloom whatsoever when you learn how to think responsibly.

Get ready to be inspired!

"It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are."

~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross