Jane Brody's Guide To The Great Beyond

The result can be undue anguish for ourselves in the course of our dying and those we leave behind, not only during our final days, but for weeks, months, even years thereafter.

In this section, you and your family will learn what is best done well in advance of the end and how to accomplish it. Perhaps you are now young and healthy and thinking, "Why worry about something most likely years in the future?" But when you are young and healthy is the very best time to start — with minimal emotional pressure to color your thoughts. Furthermore, as you well know but probably don't want to admit, you never know when your time, or the time of your loved ones, may come to cross over to the Great Beyond.

But when you are young and healthy is the very best time to start — with minimal emotional pressure to color your thoughts.

Fear not. Nothing you do or say now will be etched in stone. You can always make changes as your life circumstances, feelings, and beliefs alter. But without an initial template, waiting until the bitter end will make the task that much harder and perhaps even impossible to accomplish.

Yet the overwhelming majority of people are ill prepared for their final days, or the final days of the people they love. Some people are superstitious. They harbor an irrational belief that thinking about death is inviting trouble. But the real trouble comes from not thinking about death well in advance. Others simply haven't bothered. Why not put off until tomorrow what you don't have to do today? But what if tomorrow is too late?

No matter what your age or the age of your loved ones, the time to prepare yourself for the inevitable is now. You never know when the end may come and whether you will be able to speak for yourself as it approaches.

Too many people wait until it is too late to determine how they wish to spend their final days.

Too many people have neither discussed nor recorded their end-of-life wishes with the people most likely to have a say in the matter.

Too many people are at risk of ending up like Terri Schiavo, locked in a vegetative state for years while their families fight over how to proceed.

Too many people spend their dying days suffering needlessly with intractable pain or plagued by futile medical interventions.

Too many people assume incorrectly that having written a living will, they are protected from unwanted interventions when death is near.

And too many families are unprepared for the sudden, unexpected death of a loved one — young, old, or in between.

NOTE: We regret that we cannot answer personal medical questions.

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