Aha Moment
Did you ever have something occur that leads from one thing, to another and another? Well, recently that’s exactly what happened to my wife and I as we were walking around our yard this spring checking out what landscape plantings survived the winter. We came upon two ornamental plums pictured above next to our deck that I’ve been trying to nurture back to health for the last couple years. Once a farmer, always a farmer, I guess!
The plums have a fungus in the form of a black canker on many of the branches and this spring the seriousness of the problem was much more evident than it had been last fall before the leaves fell. My wife concluded it’s time to “pull the plug” on these plums, as the only effective treatment is to prune out all the branches with cankers, which would leave nothing but the trunk.
As we continued around the yard, my wife had an aha moment and said that when she’s on her deathbed, I’d be pushing the doctors to try anything to prolong her life and would never “pull the plug”, just like my desperate efforts to save our plums and many other plantings around the yard over the years. To my chagrin, she was probably right! So I wondered out loud what was actually stated in our “advanced directives” document about such end of life decisions.
That moment led us to conclude we not only should check our estate planning documents, but also review them as it’s been about 15 years since the last update. And if we were going to do that, let’s look for a younger female estate planner as several of my wife’s widow friends wished they would have had such an arrangement when their spouse passed away, since statistically the wife outlives her the husband by 12 years.
So once our yard tour was over, I opened up the safe, pulled out the documents and began searching for a new estate planning attorney. We found one who several friends recommended and met with her yesterday to kick off the process, including updating the wording in our advanced directives.
All this end of life talking got me thinking about our life together and suddenly the wall in my office with all the framed mementos had more meaning. I took a closer look at each item and thought about the consequences, especially how one step led to the next and to the next; and before long here we are talking about end of life stuff! The framed birth certificate, high school and college diplomas and marriage certificate shown below definitely set the stage for the rest of my life. How lucky I feel to have been guided to attained those early milestones (study hard and marry a Roo-shee girl!).
Shown next are some of the framed mementos from our married life and my working career with Ford. From building our lakefront home to traveling the world for both business and pleasure are reflected on that wall. Also include are keepsakes from playing and watching sports of all kinds.
And finally are items reflecting my work after retirement such as running for public office, becoming Mayor in our small city of 2200, some charitable work and various projects that came along since I had the time. The wall is full and that’s just fine at this stage of my life.
Just before Covid another fortunate occurrence involved fully retiring from most everything except the charitable work, a few unfinished projects and of course the honey do’s which will continue until the unfortunate day comes when my wife “pulls the plug” on me!
Speaking of that, the “plug has been pulled” on the ornamental plums. Aha!
PS: Check out my Roo-shee frog ornament - lower right.
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