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Dying is a part of life, and Town Crier Kendra Willis says it's better to be ready than to leave loved ones unprepared for the aftermath.
I answered the phone call on the second ring, holding my breath as I had done every time my grandparents’ phone number showed up on my caller ID at weird times of the day. Usually, the calls weren’t meant to scare me, and I was glad to hear my grandma shouting about the victorious contestants on "Deal Or No Deal" or my ailing grandfather’s lack of appetite or her predictions about the weather for the upcoming week.
But for some reason, this particular early-morning call on June 24 sent a nervous chill down my spine.
By the time I made it to Sutter Tracy Community Hospital, my grandfather was gone. He was 86 years old, and doctors couldn’t save him. Cancer was the culprit. They had already told me that his time was near, but every time I thought about how much time he didn’t have left, he would crack a joke and make me believe that, just maybe, his doctors had it all wrong.
Of course, I know that at some point, death will claim us all, but what I didn’t know was how much work is in involved in laying someone to rest. My grandfather, like so many other Americans, had no life insurance policy, no last will and no power of attorney left to stand up and take action. In fact, during the last year of his life, I had been somewhat cast as his right-hand man when it came to his business affairs. I helped him with all his living matters, but never once did we come up with a plan of action about his death wishes.
In my family, it is taboo to talk about death when someone is still breathing, even if the doctor gives them three months to live and a hospice care taker is feeding them through a tube. So there I was, sitting with a couple of my cousins in a family room at the hospital, waiting to sign release forms for my dead grandpa. The forms came, and I signed them, and then a volunteer chaplain wanted to know what our plans were.
Plans? We had no plans. I mean, I had just released his body but had no idea where to release it to. I needed a plan, and for the first time ever, when I needed it most, I didn’t have one. Someone from the hospital gave me a fact sheet that listed local mortuaries and cemeteries and I began to dial the numbers.
Soon I realized that a funeral was a large expense. In fact, the price tag was much larger than I had bargained for — $10,000, to be exact. My grandmother, who was so distraught, had to figure out where to hold services, how to dress my grandfather and where to bury him, and those were just a few of the major decisions that had to be made within a couple days.
By the end of the week, thousands of dollars in cash had to be coughed up, and preparations had to be finalized.
It was during that week after his death that I realized that death needs to be confronted head on before we die. Putting a loved one through so much stress can be avoided if we would take the time to make our own preparations and after-death decisions.
After my grandfather’s passing, I decided to talk with not just my husband, but my mother and my siblings, to try to help them put together a plan of action that we can all live and die with. I wanted to make sure that never again will I be put in a situation where I am totally unprepared and unaware of what I am doing or expecting from a situation.
Now I encourage everyone to put a plan of action in place, to set up not just a last will but to also adopt a living will and buy life insurance to protect their assets and future generations.
At some point we all have to realize that dying is a part of living.
At a glance
A few things to do when a loved one dies:
• Notify family and friends
• Write an obituary for the local paper
• Register the death within five days, in order to make burial arrangements
• Locate insurance policies and notify insurance companies
• Contact Social Security, banks, military organizations and other agencies
• Locate the will (if there is one)
• Make funeral and burial arrangements
• Contact utility companies, mortgage/landlord, post office.
• Kendra L. Willis, a local businesswoman, motivational speaker and mother of two is among a select group of local residents with columns in the Tracy Press.
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A very well written article and I am very sorry for your family's personal loss. Having gone through this experience in my own life I completely understand where you are coming from.
People of Tracy, this is a continuing story with our elderly and one that all of you should address before the end comes.
Kendra failed to mention things like nursing homes. Places where the infirm and elderly can be taken care of and get the care they need when it becomes impossible for family members to take care of them.
Does anyone have any idea what the monthly costs of these facilities are? The last time I looked into that issue the cost was $6,500 and more per months based on the care that is required.
Long term disability insurance can cover these costs if you get those policies before something happens. And yes, you can get state assistance but the restrictions are phenomenal and if you desire to leave anything to your children and grandchildren you will be sorely disappointed in that the State cannot help you with assistance until you have almost completely drained all of your hard earned financial resources.
The fact is that none of us are going to make it out of here alive and death is simply another part of living. If you plan for it, from what I have witnessed, it's not all that bad. If you think it's never going to happen to you or that you are going to witness the second coming before you die, you are going to really have a hard time of it.