Our family learned some important lessons from the things that didn’t go well when we were caregivers for Dad. Perhaps the most important of these is how crucial it is to communicate early and often with one another about late life and end of life issues.
I think Dad did his best to let us know his needs and wants, but it seemed to me that he himself wasn’t all that clear on what they were. Because we hadn’t really developed the habit of sitting down and mulling over our ideas about the future, when the future arrived, talking—never easy with folks of Dad’s generation–was that much more difficult. I learned that when the pressure is on it is best to have a history of thoughtful and open-hearted discussions to inform our assumptions about …
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