Engage with Grace

Thanks to my friend Bob Coffield at The Health Care Blog who is encouraging this important coversation in families. Asking you to take a moment this weekend to discuss your desires for how to live the end of your life as meaningfully as possible--If you want to reproduce this post on your blog (or anywhere) you can download a ready-made html version hereMatthew Holt

Last Thanksgiving weekend, many of us bloggers participated in the first documented �blog rally� to promote Engage With Grace � a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes.
It was a great success, with over 100 bloggers in the healthcare space and beyond participating and spreading the word. Plus, it was timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations � our closest friends and family.
Our original mission � to get more and more people talking about their end of life wishes � hasn�t changed. But it�s been quite a year � so we thought this holiday, we�d try something different.

A bit of levity.

At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation started. We�ve included them at the end of this post. They�re not easy questions, but they are important.
To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, we thought we�d start with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer:

Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like this � just five questions in plain, simple language � can deflate some of the complexity, formality and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion.
So with that, we�ve included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them.



Over the past year there�s been a lot of discussion around end of life. And we�ve been fortunate to hear a lot of the more uplifting stories, as folks have used these five questions to initiate the conversation.



One man shared how surprised he was to learn that his wife�s preferences were not what he expected. Befitting this holiday, The One Slide now stands sentry on their fridge.



Wishing you and yours a holiday that�s fulfilling in all the right ways.

(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. )

Why He's Leaving West Virginia....and Why You Should Care

Sometimes the most helpful thing I feel like I can do with this blog is to use it to highlight the words of others.

Scott Finn, award-winning investigative reporter, is moving his family to Florida. This loss for our state resonates in many places for me. The most painful part is that it removes all plausible deniability that our state legislature "gets it" at all. Things connect, they are not isolated issues. What is in the best long-term interest of the state of West Virginia is what is in the best interest of children and families.

"......the purpose of this essay is to get you to realize what a serious problem autism is for thousands of families in West Virginia - and to get you to do something about it."

I hope you'll give five minutes to this well-written op-ed on a subject that, if it has not touched you yet, will:

http://www.wvgazette.com/Opinion/OpEdCommentaries/200911210272

Storm Brewing

Sometimes in the middle of a beautiful sunny day, there is a terrible secret.

Sometimes when our eyes are full of delight and our hearts are full of love, we can be blind to the actual climate of a situation, and those clouds can come roiling up out of nowhere and, well.....you just wished you'd checked The Weather Channel.

I had a tough experience this weekend watching a dear friend verbally attack someone else that I love, and it all happened at what was supposed to be a nice event. After a little reconnaissance I figured out what happened, but that didn't really make it any better. It got me thinking about the difference between how a person feels and how they act.

I don't really want to argue about the feelings. You can't tell people their feelings are wrong. (You can, but it makes things worse.) But I might want to have a conversation about the actions. I'm debating this because I was not directly involved and it may alienate me from the person who said some inappropriate things. He's in a very stressful emotional state to begin with, and I don't want to upset him more. But I have not been able to stop thinking about how unkind the words were and how far out of kilter they were with the actual situation.

I did call the person who received the aggression, and extended my regrets that it happened. That might be enough.

It might not.

Photo credit Zevotron, http://www.flickr.com/photos/randomurl/842016056/

Scarletts and Melanies

A friend of mine recently mused, "In this life there are Scarletts, and there are Melanies." What followed was the predictable rush of women to assert that they were Scarletts, they had gumption, they were independent, and one may fairly assume that they were captivatingly gorgeous as well........



But my friend and I got into a side conversation about Miss Melly, a character who as I grow older I find all the more incredible and in fact the true bad ass of Gone with the Wind. (I noticed right away that my friend never judged one or the other, but it was immediately assumed she was lifting up Scarlett as cooler and more preferable.)



If you recall, Melanie's portrayal as "mealy mouthed" and basically a big loser comes only from Scarlett, her chief rival for Ashley Wilkes' love. If you discount Scarlett's obvious bias against her and just judge her on the merits of her actions and her approach to life, she is a complete rock star.



She is incredibly kind. She never has a bad word to say about anyone, and in fact rushes to Scarlett's public defense, calling her "sister," when anyone else would have let her crumble under the much-deserved public scorn she heaps upon herself. She knocks out a Civil War childbirth with no medical help. She is able to talk Rhett, rendered incoherent and insane with grief, off the proverbial ledge when his child dies. I have some vague recollection of her dragging a sword to Scarlett's rescue when she can barely walk herself. There is more, but these are my favorite memories of Miss Melly in Gone With the Wind.......



I don't need to tell you what a repulsive person Scarlett O'Hara is. Yes, she is stubborn. She is a fighter and a survivor. But she wouldn't know love or friendship if they slapped her in the face, and unless someone is serving her in the manner she wants to be served and worshipped, she has no use for them.



So yes, I think I might want a Scarlett if I need someone to do absolutely anything necessary to never be hungry again. But I want a Melanie beside me in life for the long haul.



Thankfully, I have many.


No photo credit, I probably don't have permission to use this, but I thought it a lovely photo of Olivia de Havilland.

That's right, she said Tooth Fairy.

Well, actually it's not "right." But it is what she said.

This morning a friend of a friend compared climate change due to pollution as the same thing as believing in the Tooth Fairy.

Apparently as Americans we are continuing to exert our God-given right to believe whatever we want to believe, regardless of what research and science demonstrates. The person commenting was implying that "believing" in climate change was the same thing as believing in the Tooth Fairy, and that sooner or later everyone needed to grow up and stop making things up.

There are so many levels of frustration I have with this there is no room or time to go into it all, but here are some questions I have:

1) Why would anyone want to "believe" in climate change? What possible advantage does this provide to anyone in any way? It's making my life pretty damn inconvenient. Oh, wait......

2) Why are we still using words like "believe" when discussing science?

3) How can a person seriously argue that people are not having a negative impact on planet Earth through our rampant consumption and disposal?

4) I don't care who you are, if you're not a scientist do you seriously think your opinion overrides the peer-reviewed research of some of the best-trained minds in the field of biology and other related sciences? When did we decide the mood ring should drive public policy?

Another person commented on how the "enviro-tards" have the audacity to think that humankind can defeat nature, but I think that's missing the point. Yes, the Earth will go on. Nature will absolutely win......but here's the kicker: If we don't literally clean up our act, people and everything we currently know and love about life will be gone. Not in the lifetime of anyone reading this, but eventually.

If you're down with that, carry on. I'll leave a quarter under your pillow for you in the morning.

Photo credit: westerndave http://www.flickr.com/photos/westerndave/101849734/

WV, I WILL CREATE......

West Virginia, I WILL CREATE……the next generation of West Virginians who think, who do, and who love our state. I think so often about the opportunities we have every day with young people in our lives to teach by example. About everything. Do we show them how much we love West Virginia? Do we show them that love for WV, like love for anyone or anything, is not about selfishness, or jealousies, or holding so close there is no growth? I need to not just say, but do.

My child holds me accountable every day for 1,000 things. I see her study my reactions, my tone of voice, my interaction with others, my comfort level in every situation. We all have so much opportunity to create the future through our purposeful interactions with children, both our own and all of those around us.

I WILL CREATE…..a new future by showing these children that seeing the world is not betraying anyone or anything, that getting more education than the generation before you is not being unfaithful to family, that being willing to lead sometimes mean being willing to be marginalized, and that the good fight is always, always worth it.

Posted originally for A Better West Virginia

http://www.abetterwestvirginia.com/2009/10/07/invigorating-the-creativity-of-west-virginians/

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/giuliana86/3556230992/

The Dream is Always the Same

As Tom Cruise famously quipped, "The dream is always the same."

I'm on campus at Davidson College. It's a beautiful late fall afternoon with slanted gold light. There's that sweet smell of some blooming evergreen shrub and the soft sliding sound of insect legs rubbing together. I belong there.

Then I have a moment of panicked recognition. I'm about to not belong there. I'm in my senior year, all the tests are taken, profs are packing up classrooms for the summer, and my dorm is being emptied. No one is kicking me out exactly. But it's over.

I become intensely aware that this summer I will not go home and come back. I will just go home. (Dream editor's note: Apparently my subconscious is not concerned with seasonal continuity; I think the opening of the dream in autumn must be a metaphor for something drawing to a close.)

Now I am awash in all that I have taken for granted: the friends, the freedom, the opportunities, the culture of intellectual investigation and honorable debate. My mind races to bargain my way out.........what if I do this, what if I say that, how can I make this not be real. I belong here! This is my life. This is where everything makes sense, where everything has a purpose.

This is where I make sense.

But because the dream is always the same, it always ends the same way. I stand on campus with underclassmen milling around with their backpacks, and see that they are oblivious to my reality. They have one more year, or two or three. My heart feels like a stone in my chest. I know I can't come back, but I don't know where I am going or how I will cope with the fact I can never return, not really. I can come back to this physical place, but this Place is no more.

Like a play the curtain of my mind draws shut. I wake up, knowing full well I will relive this moment over and over again for the rest of my life. I focus on bittersweet gratitude, squeeze my eyes open and closed, and pull myself up.

Photo credit by Muffet: http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/281377918/