WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT LOSS OF A PARENT PRACTICAL 500+ RESOURCE GUIDE (A.K.A MOM MINUS DAD...)
Finalist in the Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards
—Foreword Magazine
Honorable Mention for Non-Fiction in the Writer’s Digest Magazine’s 16th Annual 2008 International Self-Publishing Awards
—Writer’s Digest Magazine
“For caregivers of ill or aging parents; compassionate, concise and packed with resources and advice.”
—National Funeral Directors Association
“…Written with care and concern, Mom Minus Dad, offers consolation through the lens of personal experience.”
—Rehab and Community Care Medicine Magazine; Toronto, Canada
“…Mom Minus Dad is filled with more than 500 Web sites, companies, government resources, U.S. laws, books and nonprofit organizations to assist adult children with a newly widowed parent.”
—Southern Seasons Magazine
“…Grief and loss resources for these sons and daughters are everywhere, but no one - until now, that is - has compiled the more than five hundred resources to assist adults with a newly widowed parent in one place.”
—Atlanta Hospital News
“Mom Minus Dad is a good, steady companion for anyone facing the inevitable life transition of the death of a parent and the ensuing grief….I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone coping with or anticipating the death of a parent.”
—Jeffrey Brantley MD, director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program at Duke Integrative Medicine and author of Calming Your Anxious Mind, and coauthor of the Five Good Minutes book series
“Mom Minus Dad would have been so helpful to me when I lost my own dad so many years ago---unfortunately, it hadn't been written yet. I want to applaud the author for doing such in depth research. She also demonstrates an understanding, both personally and professionally, of what the adult child is experiencing and challenged by in caring for a widowed parent….It will also prove to be a valuable resource for professionals (clergy, counselors, therapists, etc) and one they will want to keep on their shelves.”
—Pamela D. Blair, Co-Author I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One
“Mom Minus Dad is a treasure trove of resources for coping with the challenging transition after the loss of a parent. The author writes with compassion and wisdom as she shares her personal experience and practical suggestions, making this book both enjoyable to read and very workable in its application. I've been recommending it to my clients and highly recommend it to anyone who has just lost a parent.”
—Alexandra Kennedy, author of Losing a Parent
“…It’s like sitting down over the kitchen table with a good friend who, through the lens of her own personal experience, acts like a mentor, guide, and soft shoulder to lean on. Rich with resources and packed with very practical and “doable” suggestions. A “must-have” for anyone who has suffered the loss of a parent. Our firm will be recommending the book to our own clients.”
—Gene Osofsky, Elder Law Attorney, San Francisco Bay Area
“… Mom Minus Dad contains an impressive 113 pages of resources covering almost every topic a child might encounter while helping a grieving parent, including low-cost airfares available to the bereaved, food delivery services, state-by-state bereavement support groups, bookkeepers, moving companies, online communities, and legal issues.”
—Elderlawanswers.com
“This is the most incredible resource I have ever seen—prepared with such care and concern, as well as always-needed humor and reassurance. Ms. Haverkampf not only shares from her own experience but also has organized exhaustive research, which will make your journey much easier!”
—Lulu Orr, executive director, Good Grief Center for Bereavement Support
“…Pastor’s and Stephen’s Ministers may find these books to be useful resources for sharing with those who suddenly find themselves caring for a parent. Let us not forget that the Fifth Commandments is “Honor your father and mother.”"
— Rev. Chris Barbieri writing for the Wesleyan Christian Advocate Newspaper
“… In between her own story of losing a father, the author proves solid resources available to make things easier for the rest of us. The hours she and her sister spent researching the internet for their mother is now in one informative book.”
—Fresno Bee’s CentralValleyMoms.com
“…Mom Minus Dad is indeed an essential resource guide for every adult child who helps a surviving parent navigate the maze of practical responsibilities before or after a loved one’s death…”
—Yvette Colón, PhD, MSW, Director of Education and Internet Services, The American Pain Foundation
“Mom Minus Dad is like having a best friend to guide you through one of the toughest times of your life. Compassionate, concise, and packed with resources and the advice you need just when you need it most. A must read for caregivers of ill or aging parents.”
—Sheila Warnock, founder and president, SharetheCaregiving, Inc. Coauthor, Share the Care, How to Organize a Group to Care for Someone Who Is Seriously Ill
“…Mom Minus Dad provides a real service to anyone facing the death of a loved one. No one in our culture wants to discuss death and its surrounding grief and responsibilities. Jamieson not only provides an encyclopedic guide to resources and information but also shares her own personal struggle with her father’s death. By sharing the experiences she, her mother, and sister endured, she will make the journey for others less difficult.”
—Carolyn Newton Curry PhD, founder and director, Women Alone Together®
“Jamieson and her family have lived the nightmare that keeps the rest of us awake at night— just thinking about the journey ahead….Mom Minus Dad acts as the travel guide for adult children and aging parents to follow as they face the inevitable end-of-life issues. On the road map, Jamieson has posted warning signs based upon personal experience to keep you on the right track, and she offers pot-hole-free roads to follow with her extensive resource listing. This is a must-have resource book for all families.”
—Jeanne K. Smith, estate organization expert Founder of Exit Stage Right®
“A widowed
person’s emotional and physical health, as well as that of his or
her adult children, is often overlooked. Paperwork, legal confusion,
and stressful family dynamics delay the grieving process, leaving
everyone exhausted and struggling to cope.Mom
Minus Dad
hopes
to keep this from happening. This book contains the levelheaded
advice and essential resources adults need to navigate such a
difficult time…”
—Ladieswholaunch.com
Mom Minus Dad:
The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults
with a Newly Widowed Parent
Jamieson Haverkampf
Blooming Women Press L.L.C., Atlanta, Georgia
Publisher and Title Information
Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent
Blooming Women Press L.L.C., 4355 Cobb Parkway, Suite J608, Atlanta, GA 30339
orders@theparentlossbook.com
www.momminusdad.com
© 2009 Jamieson Haverkampf. All rights reserved.
International Standard Book Numbers
Softcover: 978-1-934953-19-8
Ebook: 978-1-934953-21-1
Smashwords Edition. United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging Information
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008920216
Library of Congress subject heading: Death-Dying, Bereavement, Grief, Loss, Parents, Widows and Widowers-Widowhood.
Cover and book design by Burtch Hunter Design
Legal Disclaimer
This book is not intended to serve as a substitute for advice from a physician, attorney, accountant, counselor, financial advisor, or other professional on some of the issues addressed in this book. We’ve done our best to provide useful and accurate resources in this book, but information in this area changes frequently and is subject to differing interpretations. If you want specific professional advice, please seek such from a professional in that field of interest. The books, Web sites, organizations, associations, and nonprofit organizations listed as resources in this book are provided as a convenience and for informational purposes only; they do not constitute endorsement or approval by the author of any of the products, services, or opinions of the respective corporation, organization, or individual. The author bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality, or content of these resources. If you use the resources listed in this book, it is your responsibility to make sure that the facts and general advice contained in it are applicable to your situation.
Where can I find the author, Jamieson Haverkampf, online?
Blog: www.momminusdad.com/blog
Follow me on Twitter: username: parentlosauthor at www.twitter.com
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiesonhaverkampf
Web site: www.momminusdad.com
Current Articles: http://momminusdad.com/blog/?page_id=25
Email: mailto:jamieson@theparentlossbook.com
Download E-book copies of Mom Minus Dad
(available in these formats on smashwords.com: HTML, Javascript, Kindle/.mobi, Epub/Stanza Reader, PDF, RTF, LRF/Sony Reader, Palm Doc/PDB, plain text and for iPhone, iPod Touch, and IRex Iliad)
Dedication
Mom Minus Dad is dedicated to God and His Son, Jesus Christ, for daily guidance, and to my earthly mother and father, for the countless sacrifices they both made on my behalf.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PREFACE: A Note to the Reader
PART I: INTRODUCTION
PART II: DILEMMAS AND SOLUTIONS AFTER THE LOSS OF A PARENT
CHAPTER ONE: FIRST WEEKS AFTER LOSS
Do Only Essential Tasks
Create an Energy Team
CHAPTER TWO: BUILD YOUR SUPPORT TEAM
Support Groups: What Are Your Options?
Individual Therapy: Is It for Me?
Online Support Groups
CHAPTER THREE: TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF
Time Off from Work
Healthy Boundaries
Should We Create a Caregiver Contract?
The Hour-Long Vacation
Ground Yourself
CHAPTER FOUR: PAPERWORK AND FINANCES
Organizers, Assistants, and Bookkeepers
Merge, Purge, and Automate
Create a New Budget
How to Settle an Estate
Who Will Manage the Investments?
CHAPTER FIVE: TECHNOLOGY TIME-SAVERS
Automate Everything
Online and Local Tech Support
CHAPTER SIX: MOVING FORWARD
Critical Motivators
Think Short-Term
Celebrate Milestones
CHAPTER SEVEN: HOLIDAYS AND ANNIVERSARIES
Rethink Your Holiday Routine
Create a Yearly Memorial
CHAPTER EIGHT: MOVING MOM OR DAD
Suggest Mom or Dad Wait to Move—if Possible Where Should Mom or Dad Retire?
How To Help a Parent Prepare for a Move, Give Away Belongings or Clean Out a Home
When and How to Sell Your Parent’s Home
CHAPTER NINE: CHANGES IN FAMILY DYNAMICS
Everyone Needs a New Family Job
Stay Sensitive to Big Changes
Unblock, Change, and Boost Energy
CHAPTER TEN: COMMUNITY
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Community
Find Out Who Your Real Friends Are
Group Travel Opportunities
Let Mom or Dad Try Anything
PART III : RESOURCES
More than five hundred useful Web sites, companies, people, organizations, U.S. government laws, nonprofit organizations, associations, and books
EPILOGUE
A WORD TO READERS: Caroline Haverkampf
APPENDIXES
Appendix A: Sample Obituaries
Female Academic
Successful Lawyer
A Full, Good, Ordinary Life
Appendix B: Legal Concerns and Directives
Healthcare Directives and Proxies
The Importance of a Will
Prenuptial Agreement for Remarriage
Appendix C: Worksheets
General Paperwork to Gather
Sample Filing Categories
12 Steps to a Move
New Family Jobs
Community Extra-Hands List
Appendix D: Payment Options for Funeral Homes
Appendix E: Eldercare Resources
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jamieson Haverkampf knows the frustrations, struggles and successes of caregiving for ill, aging, and dying parents first hand. In her early thirties, Ms. Haverkampf and her sister supported and advised their 61-year-old father with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma through eleven months of chemotherapy, radiation, a stem cell transplant and a clinical trial at M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital. After their father’s death in 2001, Ms. Haverkampf and her sister shifted gears to assist their fifty-six-year-old mother through the heart-wrenching and decision-loaded journey of unexpected widowhood.
Along her caregiving journey, Ms. Haverkampf hunted for books with resources and advice to help her navigate her new role as a “surrogate spouse” of a newly widowed parent. Additionally, Ms. Haverkampf needed tools to balance her own life with changing family dynamics and new responsibilities. She found many books about bereavement, grief, and loss written to counsel widows or widowers, but most of these books didn’t address the modern needs of busy adult sons and daughters of these widows or widowers who end up guiding—and in some cases making— many decisions for their widowed parent. Ms. Haverkampf’s quest for a resource guide to assist adults with a newly widowed parent ended in 2004 when she realized the book she so urgently needed didn’t exist.
As she gathered her own helpful resources, advice, and strategies to use with her widowed mother, Ms. Haverkampf wanted to help the more than twelve million people who lose a parent every year with this information she accumulated. Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent is a compilation of her best hands-on tips, resources, and advice for other adult sons and daughters struggling to balance life while assisting a newly widowed parent.
Along her journey of loss and healing, Ms. Haverkampf became certified as a Grief Recovery Specialist through the Grief Recovery Institute in Sherman Oaks, California. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her two-year-old Cavalier dog, Fritz, who loves to curl up under her desk and sleep while Jamieson writes.
Mom Minus Dad has won five book awards from Writer’s Digest Magazine, Foreword Magazine, Mom’s Choice Awards, Indie Book Awards and the Georgia Writers’ Association.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to all my friends and family members for their support while I wrote Mom Minus Dad. I could not have completed the book without your love, interest, and time. Thank you to God for my constant strength and great blessings; to my father, John; my sister, Ivy, and my mom, Caroline, for all their love and support; the Buckhead Church community and Andy Stanley for inspiring, encouraging, giving me strength, and healing my heart; to Dr. Jan Thorpe for her constant support, insights, wisdom, and encouragement; to the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference writers, editors, agents, teachers, and speakers who nurtured, encouraged, and inspired me; to Sharon Dotson and Heather Zarrett for continuing to be the greatest of friends; to the G9 for supporting me at my father’s memorial service; to Melinda Schomaker, Abby Schomaker, Peter and Susie Haverkampf, Joan Von Lessen, and Leslie Johnson for coming to Houston; to the early readers of the book: Laura Blossey, Neale Kitchens, Cynthia Black, Janet Haverkampf, Julie McNulty, Meg Young, Patti Styles, Ivy Haverkampf, Caroline Haverkampf, Ardith Ashton, Kathryn Sant, Elaine Sims, Alisa Barry, Peggy Post, Robin Lesses, and Kathleen Gulbransen; to Stacy Milrany for her creativity; to Melissa Libby for her generosity
in sharing information and ideas; to my editors, Bobbie Christmas, Janis Whipple, and Carolyn Pincus; to my book designer Burtch Hunter, to all the doctors and nurses at the Massey Cancer Center, Georgetown Hospital, and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center for all you did to try to save my father; to Meg Young, Sonya Whitmire, Samantha Hughes, Traci Bloodworth, and Jennifer Pipin for your friendship and support; to Dan Poynter for opening the doors of publishing opportunity; and to Dr. John Roberts for your early belief in me as a writer.
In addition, I would like to thank the many experts who generously provided their wisdom and expertise for this project, including: Kathy Baltzell MA; Michele Blair; Martha Bolton; Jeffrey Brantley MD; Yvette Colón PhD, MSW, ACSW, BCD; Candice Courtney, Carolyn Newton Curry PhD; Raphael Cushnir; Tom Ellis MA, MFT; Jennifer Dempsey Fox JD, MBA, CFP; Donna M. Genett PhD; Janine Goben; Tom Golden LCSW; Peg Guild; Chris Hartwell MSW; Heather Clauson Haughian; Martha Whitmore Hickman; Cathy Hounsell, Judy Jordan MFT; Alexandra Kennedy MA; Grace Lebow LCSW-C; Cendra Lynn PhD; Ron Manheimer PhD; Marta Gordon Martinez; Jane Monachelli MA, LPC; David Morrill; Cathy Olivetti JD; Lulu Orr; Gene L. Osofsky JD; Ashley Davis Prend LCSW, ACSW; the Publishers Marketing Association; Donna Robbins; Debbie Rodgers; Maria Savage; Jeanne K. Smith; Anne Bryan Smollin; Lisa Thompson; Dennis Toman JD; and Sheila Warnock. Thank you.
And finally, thank you to all the adult children with widowed parents who give much of their time, love, and support to enhance the lives of others.
PREFACE
A NOTE TO THE READER
Mom Minus Dad was not written to assist you in managing your grief after the loss of a parent, but instead to support you with resources and ideas as you juggle new responsibilities and life changes with a newly widowed parent. Grief looms large as a natural emotion associated with the death and loss that affects people in numerous ways and at unpredictable times. Although I am trained as a Grief Recovery Specialist, I am not a professional therapist. Because grief is an important emotion to understand as you deal with loss, below are two well-known resources for managing and understanding grief and its symptoms to complement the resources and suggestions in Mom Minus Dad.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross became a pioneer in identifying and labeling the various grieving stages when she wrote her book, On Death and Dying, published in 1969. She based her information on her evaluation of the grieving stages of terminally ill patients. Those stages quickly became used in the grief-and-loss field, and the media’s use of them created mainstream acceptance of Kübler-Ross’s finding. Kübler-Ross’s five grief stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. For more information on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work and her many books, see Part III: “Resources”.
Another respected and well-known grief resource, the Grief Recovery Institute has provided grief assistance for more than twenty years. Through seminars, programs, and literature, the Grief Recovery Institute builds skills and tools both for grieving individuals and those who counsel others through their grief. The institute’s three book offerings include The Grief Recovery Handbook: The Action Program for Moving beyond Death, Divorce, and Other Losses; When Children Grieve; and Moving On: Dump Your Relationship Baggage and Make Room for the Love of Your Life. These books explore and lay out a grief-recovery action program using a loss-history graph, letter-writing techniques, and community as resource. The coauthors of these books are Grief Recovery Specialists and have trained and certified others to teach Grief Recovery workshops throughout the United States.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the Grief Recovery Institute are only two grief resources of many available in the marketplace. Review other grief books in Part III: “Resources” under the First Weeks after Loss section. Find a grief resource or two that works for you when you want to understand or need to go deeper as you work with your personal grief.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Mom Minus Dad grew out of my and my sister’s personal experience aiding my mother in the months and years following my father’s unexpected death. Ivy and I did not have such a comprehensive guide to follow, so this book was written in hopes of offering you a manual as you walk down this difficult path as the adult child of a widowed parent.
BOLD FACED RESOURCES THROUGHOUT BOOK
You have already noticed the boldfaced type in the above references to the Grief Recovery Institute. Throughout this book, you will find numerous boldfaced references to help point you to a huge array of resources. each reference’s full description can be found in Part III: “Resources”.
In addition, a lengthy index can help you pull up resources as you need them, and an annotated table of contents can help you navigate your way through the book in the areas you have need. As with many resource guides, Mom Minus Dad is written and designed for you to delve into the areas that you most need at the time, and skim over those that do not apply to your current situation. Part I introduces you to our family’s story and struggles following Dad’s death. Part II offers ten corresponding dilemmas and numerous solutions to help you in your own situation. At the end of each section in the chapters, you’ll also find a list of questions to help you evaluate you and your parent’s current needs regarding that topic. Part III is a large list of resources we compiled through our own needs and research.
In addition, throughout the book, I have woven in pieces of our story—mine, my sister Ivy’s, and Mom’s—as we walked together through the struggles after such a great loss, many of which can last for years. Whether you are minus a mom or minus a dad, my hope is that you will find Mom Minus Dad an invaluable resource during your and your widowed parent’s time of grief and recovery.
As you read Mom Minus Dad, I would love to hear your feedback through any comments, suggestions or corrections. Just send me an email to the address below.
Warm Wishes,
Jamieson Haverkampf
mailto:jamieson@theparentlossbook.com
TERMS USED IN THIS BOOK
To help you quickly locate the information you need as you seek resources for your particular situation, five different terms identify specific content throughout the book. Here’s what each term means:
Our Story: Our Story indicates a short section on how my family managed, struggled, or succeeded with the chapter topic.
Benefits: This section alerts you to the benefits of addressing the chapter topic.
Special Note: Special Note signals a special tip related to the chapter topic.
Resources: Here you will find the best resources to assist you and your parent with more information on the chapter topic.
Questions: This section alerts you to a section of questions for you to ask yourself or your parent regarding the chapter topic. These questions help you brainstorm solutions for your particular situation.
PART I
Introduction
Two Daughters Face the Challenges of the Loss of a Parent
and a Newly Widowed Parent
My phone rang for the tenth time that day with Mom on the other end of the phone two thousand miles away. Six months prior, cancer had taken the life of my sixty-two-year old father, who was my mother’s husband and partner for thirty-four years. Mom cried into the phone uncontrollably when I answered. I cried too. I was torn deeply between the two worlds I most cared about—my mother and my own life. When your newly widowed parent needs your assistance, how do you determine where your job as a loving daughter or son ends so you can also take care of your own life? My sister, Ivy, and I both wrestled daily with the answer to that question. One day compassion for our mother led our decisions, the next day our own worries came first.
Dad’s death from cancer was unexpected because we were told by doctors that the remission rate for stage-three non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was high—80 percent after five years. When Dad was diagnosed in September 2000, we talked to doctors and friends to determine the best treatment. We considered many treatments, doctors, and facilities for treating his lymphoma, such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Mayo Clinic, and the University of Washington Medical Center. In the end, we selected Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, Virginia, because it was one of sixty National Cancer Institute–designated centers in the United States and had a highly respected lymphoma doctor who could administer Dad’s recommended chemotherapy treatment. Treated at Massey, my father could live at home with all his creature comforts. Of all Dad’s choices, the Massey Cancer Center seemed ideal. We expected him to survive; however, after months of chemotherapy, a failed stem-cell transplant at Georgetown University Hospital, and an experimental clinical trial at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Dad died in hospice eleven months after his initial diagnosis.
After Dad’s death, Mom was lost. Our family of four had defined Mom’s world, and she created her identity from the family role she played. She tried to work in the real estate, interior design, and horticulture fields, but my stockbroker father always needed her to travel on short notice for important business events. Therefore Mom adapted and put her husband’s career first. Her choice to support her husband and children’s dreams built her whole adult life; she fundamentally knew no other.
New Surrogate Spouse Roles
Forced into an unimaginable world without Dad’s support, Mom sought advice from her next-best-trusted confidants, her two daughters. Together Ivy and I temporarily became surrogate spouses to Mom, guiding her through seemingly endless meetings with her estate attorney, investment advisors, and CPAs.
Initially my sister and I planned to stay a week or two in Richmond after Dad’s funeral to straighten out estate paperwork and be with Mom. We lived across the country in San Francisco. At the time, we thought two weeks was long enough to sort out everything. Mom needed our eyes, ears, and shoulders to manage the piles of old and new paperwork, create a new bill-paying system, find a grief counselor, and organize the first steps to settle Dad’s estate. Because Dad had paid the monthly bills and managed the investments, Mom needed guidance for creating a new budget and understanding her financial situation. My parents’ finances were complicated because Dad worked as an investor. In those beginning weeks when Mom faced new widowhood, we wished we had known about many of the financial resources listed in “Paperwork and Finances”.
At the same time, my sister and I still owed rent on our San Francisco apartment and we had to figure out a way to restore the shambles of our lives. We talked about moving back to Richmond, but because Ivy and I loved the people and opportunities in San Francisco, we decided to return there. However, our new responsibilities to aid Mom weighed heavily on our minds and hearts. We did not know how to leave Mom and attend to the other parts of our lives. There was too much to do and Mom was lost. My sister and I needed support in order to continue to function as Mom’s cheerleaders and advisors. Grief-and-loss resources were expensive and hard to find. Mom needed new money management, paperwork, and accounting systems—fast.
Because Dad’s death was unexpected, no one was prepared for the consequences and problems we faced—especially Ivy and me. We struggled with the shock of loss, exhaustion, and the reality of living far away from a widowed parent. Our divided attention created a loss of steady income, which amplified our stress. Boundaries grew murky. Parental-loss grief groups proved hard to find. Our health suffered as we gained weight, drank too much coffee for energy, and ate junk food on the run. Family members and friends didn’t know how to help. Mom was isolated, depressed, and had lost her thirty-four-year identity as a married woman. We all faced innumerable challenges, but my sister and I, as adult children of a fifty-six-year-old newly widowed mother, faced ten particularly tough ordeals. (These ten issues, or dilemmas, form the basis for the ten chapters in part II.)
Exhaustion from Caregiving a Sick Parent
After Dad died, my sister and I were exhausted from caring for our sick father and distraught mother during the previous eleven months. During Dad’s eight months of chemotherapy treatments and later stem-cell transplant, my sister and I flew across the country from San Francisco to Richmond one week a month to boost Mom and Dad’s morale. At my parents’ home, we spent long hours surfing the Internet for any nugget of information to make the nightmare go away. We eventually left San Francisco for three months to be with Mom and Dad during the last months of Dad’s life at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, as a clinical-trial drug was administered. Every day for two and a half months, Mom, Ivy, and I walked from our hotel to the connecting bridge to Dad’s hospital room for the 7:30 a.m. blood count evaluations to see if the new drug was working. We jockeyed between spending time with our father, researching on the Internet, or being on the phone seeking clinical-trial drugs or advice. We hired a few night nurses, but we caught all of them asleep on the job. When we walked into my parents’ home a day after Dad’s death, we practically collapsed.
Mom had been my father’s sole caregiver for the prior few years before his death. Three years before the cancer invasion, my mother nursed my father after emergency surgery in which the doctors removed a large portion of Dad’s large intestine. Soon after he recovered from that, he needed a hip replacement. For Mom, Dad’s ailments never seemed to end. Mom shuffled through the tough last year of Dad’s life with cancer as an exhausted caregiver.
After an eleven-month nightmare, planning Dad’s funeral and memorial service was the last task we wanted to take on, but Mom, Ivy, and I figured out the many details. We had to decide about costs, memorial service locations, and catering options for both an Atlanta funeral and memorial service and a second service in Richmond. Review chapter 1 and “First Weeks after Loss” for better suggestions on how to handle a funeral, memorial service, and the many tasks surrounding both events.
Two Thousand Miles Apart
The two thousand miles between our home in San Francisco and Mom’s in Richmond, Virginia, created another problem. A trip from San Francisco to Richmond was a four-hundred-dollar plane flight and a four-to-six hour cross-country flight one-way. Mom called daily with questions about the location of files, bills, passwords, paperwork, or tech support needs. Because I lived so far away, I couldn’t drive over after work to find what Mom needed. Because other family members lived in Chicago, Arizona, and Atlanta, they were not able to offer Mom regular local assistance in Richmond. If we had known about the National Association of Professional Organizers, AARP’s local offices, the National Alliance for Caregiving, Geek Squad, or GoToMyPC, the distance between our homes might have been more manageable.
Lack of Income
Three months before our father’s diagnosis, my sister and I drove from Atlanta to San Francisco together, armed with a craving for adventure but with no place to live and no jobs. In our twenties, we both had pursued various fields after college. My career included work in art direction, graphic design, and illustration, whereas my sister’s included Internet sales, research, and fashion. Like our parents, Ivy and I were and are entrepreneurs at heart with restless and curious spirits. After Dad was diagnosed, we worked in San Francisco in temporary or part-time jobs that accommodated our need for a flexible schedule to fly to our parents’ home frequently.
Since we were virtually self-employed, the Family Leave and Medical Act—a government program that allows qualified employees of companies to leave work on unpaid leave for a maximum of twelve weeks—did not apply to us. We had no guarantee of jobs or income waiting for us after we took time off to assist my dying father, and later, our widowed mother. After Dad died we struggled with where to best spend our time—help Mom manage her investments, pursue graduate degrees, or continue to work in the red-hot California real estate and mortgage businesses in 2001.
Loss of Mom’s Financial Manager and Investment Advisor
During my parents’ decades of marriage, they shared the assorted responsibilities of running a household. My father paid the bills, made the money, and managed the investment decisions because he worked in the world of finance as a stockbroker. Mom embraced her role as a homemaker in charge of social planning and entertaining my father’s clients’ wives on business trips. She enjoyed and excelled at the role of family social director. Mom orchestrated our household—from renovations to cooking dinner to finishing projects that my father energetically started, then abandoned when business called.
Because Mom grew up in a traditional gender-role family where the husband managed the money, she was stunned and full of fear when Dad’s death put her in charge of managing the investments they had built together. She had learned about stock investments by being married to Dad, but relied heavily on my father to make larger investment decisions. Mom was used to managing a smaller portion of their household budget, not the entire household’s budget and complicated investments.
The first few months after Dad’s death, Mom was vulnerable and worried about handling all the financial responsibilities. We worried about her being approached by an unethical financial person who wanted to take advantage of her or by a man offering to marry her and take care of her financial worries. We knew Mom, in her weakened state, could be a target for romantic swindlers and financial shams.
Apparently Mom and Dad didn’t regularly discuss their finances or household budget together. Money management was understood to be Dad’s job in their marriage. If Dad had delegated more financial and investment responsibility to Mom, automated their regular bills, or outsourced their accounting to a firm, we wouldn’t have had so much to manage. If we had known about Women’s Institute for Financial Education, American Association of Retired Persons’ Finance Guide, Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, American Association of Individual Investors, or the National Association of Professional Organizers, all of which offered financial advice, Mom’s financial management transition might have been easier.
Mom’s Additional Job as Executor
Mom’s job as executor of Dad’s estate forced her into a year of paperwork and legal overload. The executor’s job required Mom to assemble a list of my father’s assets, including all things big and small, such as his car and any U.S. bonds he had purchased. Mom started to worry that she wouldn’t have enough money to support herself. After we spoke with her estate attorney, Ivy and I assisted Mom with the search for necessary estate documents and tried to help Mom see and understand her real financial situation.
When he was alive, Dad did not discuss the majority of my parents’ financial and legal issues with my sister and me either. He also did not leave a note in a safety deposit box or in a file outlining who to call and where specific files were located if something happened to him. We looked for anything that resembled an account. We reviewed old copies of Dad’s resumé to see if any companies he worked for in the past might still be holding an unredeemed pension benefit. We sorted through files and made a list of people to call. Dad’s paper files went back thirty years. Fortunately for us, Dad’s files showed understandable categories. Yet this was only the beginning of Mom’s job as executor; the job took Mom and her estate attorney fifteen months to complete.
I wish we had known then about AARP’s grief-and-loss checklists for settling an estate, the Internal Revenue Service’s booklet #559, or Treasury Direct, or read Facing a Death in the Family: Caring for Someone Through Illness and Dying, Arranging the Funeral, Dealing with the Will and Estate when Mom first became executor.
Limited Family Support
Our limited family support added to our liabilities. Dad had been a strong support to all of us, and we didn’t have a strong faith community to lean on. Because we have a smaller-sized family and Ivy and I were unmarried, we didn’t have access to any family members or extended family who were CPAs, lawyers, accountants, or money managers to ask for advice. Some family members assisted us with various needs initially, but after some time had passed, their focus understandably turned back to their own lives, and my sister and I were on our own to answer Mom’s questions. Two other deaths in the family the same year my father died—my mother’s father and my father’s mother—contributed to other family members’ restricted abilities to offer us stronger assistance. Mom, Ivy, and I wanted to support each other’s needs, but constant stress ran rampant through all of us.
Grief Support Hard to Find
My sister and I faced compounding losses: our father, our family as we knew it, our sense of home, income, personal time, career, and future dreams. We needed grief counselors to help us work through our own grief. Because Dad died in hospice, we did eventually find out we all could receive one year of free hospice counseling through the Medicare Hospice Benefit, section 40.2.3; however, at the time, when we searched for grief counselors through hospice programs, we did not receive useful counsel. If you are in a similar situation, I suggest doing research on multiple hospice counselors available in your local area and understanding their counseling methods prior to making an appointment. This will help you avoid negative or awkward experiences. For example, I went to one hospice counselor without understanding her background or counseling methods. The first time I talked with her, she told me to fall on my knees and beg God for mercy. At the time I wasn’t an overly religious person, and this comment wasn’t helpful in my fragile state. In those first few months after the loss of my father, I craved a nurturing counselor to be present for me, to simply listen and offer useful suggestions, based on his or her knowledge of working with grief and loss, as I sorted through my struggle of multiple losses and new decisions.
Since finances and time were limited due to our many responsibilities, we didn’t want to spend extra money or time on other counselors. Friends were empathetic but many couldn’t relate to our situation. We coped by trying to support each other, yet without a regular grief support group, we lacked perspective. If we had known about the many other local and online grief-support options, such as Griefshare, Vitas Innovative Hospice Care, Kara or GriefNet, we could have found parental-loss grief support early after our father’s death to vent our own grief and concerns for our mother.
Because Dad died in a hospice out of town, Mom searched for new grief-and-loss resources back in Richmond. When she couldn’t find a hospice or grief counselor initially after Dad’s funeral, she searched for widows’ groups in Richmond. The only grief support groups she could find had either much older members or members grieving a different kind of loss. She craved a support group with women closer to her age who had lost a spouse. In the meantime, Ivy and I functioned as Mom’s motivational cheerleaders when she had a rough day. When we went home a few months after my father’s death, we found for Mom, through our research on the Internet, a useful grief counselor who practiced in Richmond. If Mom had known about AARP’s grief-and-loss message boards, Healing the Spirit, Senior Navigator, or GriefShare, she would have had found grief support earlier, reduced her isolation, and lessened our worry about her.
My Deteriorating Health
During the three years after Dad died, my health spiraled out of control. I was juggling too many new responsibilities between Mom’s needs and running my real estate business. Workouts became optional instead of part of my regular routine. My sister and I lived on easy-to-grab, low-nutrition food and caffeine to keep us going. I worried about Mom’s health and survival too. Three years after my father died, my cholesterol hit three hundred. Eventually I burned out. I wish I had read “The Hour-Long Vacation” or “Grounding Yourself” and consulted the corresponding resources at the time to have known better ways to take care of myself in the years after Dad’s death. If I had known about Dinewise, Home Bistro or Magic Kitchen, my sister, mother, and I might have been able to eat healthier the first few months after the loss of my father, reducing the extra task of going to the grocery store or cooking meals.
No Resource Guide to Aid Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent
Ivy and I needed resources and trustworthy people to delegate the mounting responsibilities of encouraging and guiding Mom with her numerous and major financial choices, in addition to our many other needs. Yet we could not locate any practical resource guides anywhere to assist us—the adult children of a newly widowed parent. My sister and I painstakingly found bits and pieces of resources as we went along. We needed information about many new issues, such as finding grief counselors to guide us with a widowed parent’s issues and needs and coping with huge family dynamic changes. We looked for outside aid to provide Mom with technology support issues that drained my sister’s and my energies. We searched for easy systems for Mom to set up to manage tasks on her own.
A thorough resource book with practical advice, Web sites, and organizations to aid adult children with widowed parents was nowhere to be found. The only grief and loss books available focused on guiding the widow or widower, not assisting adult children to become strong and balanced advisors to their widowed parent. We needed a book offering the majority of the resources for adult children along with additional resources for widows, because the issues are intertwined. We needed advice specific to our own needs along with guidance for acting as a widowed parent’s main trusted support system. After three years of fruitless searching for a comprehensive resource book for adult children with a newly widowed parent, the idea for Mom Minus Dad was born.
Mom Minus Dad is a compilation of the resources and strategies my sister and I found or wish we had found during my father’s illness and the years after his death. Part II describes specific situations you could encounter with a widowed parent and the specific resources that may be of assistance. Part III lists descriptions and further information about more than five hundred useful associations, Web sites, books, nonprofit organizations, and other resources mentioned throughout the text of the book. The resources give you a starting point to reach out to others for advice, information, counseling, groups, or whatever you might need.
Even though my story of loss may be distinctly dissimilar from yours, my hope in Mom Minus Dad is for you to use the solutions, suggestions, ideas, and resources listed in this book as a place to start to find assistance to keep your life more balanced while aiding your newly widowed parent.
PART II
Dilemmas and Solutions after the Loss of a Parent
CHAPTER ONE
FIRST WEEKS AFTER LOSS
The first days and weeks following the death of a loved one are difficult for many reasons. First is the huge shock of loss and onset of the grieving process, which is experienced differently among family members. Then, to add to the emotional onslaught, many important and difficult decisions must be made quickly and definitively by those who are reeling from the impact of the loss of one they dearly loved. The suggestions that follow will help you and your surviving parent navigate the difficult and emotional first weeks following the loss of your mom or dad.
Do Only Essential Tasks
I can’t imagine how you feel after the loss of your parent. You may be in shock, sad, relieved, or plain exhausted—depending on how the death happened. When a parent’s death takes place, no matter if the death was unexpected or not, new roles, responsibilities, choices, and changes fall into the widow or widower’s, and other family members’ laps. Especially when an unexpected death of a parent occurs, many families aren’t prepared to deal with the many consequences.
Your widowed parent may turn to you to figure out immediate solutions to pressing problems, including finding wills, organizing a funeral and memorial service, and writing obituaries and eulogies. Other family members may stick to the sidelines not knowing how to help. Meanwhile, your own life, jam-packed with activities and responsibilities, screams for your attention. Torn between two worlds you care about, you try to juggle both. You think you have no choice. Actually, you do.
One Solution for the First Weeks after the Loss of a Parent
After the loss of a parent, people want to contribute and can do a good—if not better—job than you can. No one judges your performance at your time of grief. Life’s pace bounces hectically around you, but if you need to bow out of the spotlight temporarily, it’s okay. Do what you can, but access resources and solicit support from others to assist with the funeral and memorial service planning. Friends, extended family members, clergy or other religious leaders, funeral directors, and even professional organizers can offer assistance. Friends and family members want to donate their time and energy; tell them how.
Our Story
When my sister, mother, and I walked back into my parents’ home after losing Dad to cancer, the exhaustion and stress of those last eleven months piled high on our shoulders. Our grief coursed through our veins. The idea of turning to friends to plan the funeral and memorial service seemed selfish. My mother, my sister, Ivy, and I all went into robotic organizer mode. We knocked out tasks methodically one at a time. When I wrote Dad’s obituary, I hit my breaking point.
We all struggled with releasing control to others because everything seemed important to handle personally. The dark circles under our eyes darkened even more while we drank coffee practically nonstop and pushed on day after day. After my sister and I spent months away from our home in San Francisco, neglected work and bills called for our attention. After difficult nights of little to no sleep, we were all a mess. The workload was too much. Finally we sought help from other people, which provided solutions and reduced our tasks.
We took one task at a time and determined which duties were important for us personally to handle and which could be accomplished by others. Good friends made some of the necessary phone calls and coached us in making decisions about funeral and memorial service details. After we released some control and tasks to others we trusted, sleep came easier. We then had time to take care of ourselves by taking breaks or a walk, calling supportive friends, getting a manicure, or simply taking a nap.
We ignored our own needs when we tried to do everything ourselves. Your family may want you to take part in the planning, but you also need to take care of yourself. You may be captive to unexpected public meltdowns of emotion when you take on too much. If you try to avoid the grief that comes along with the death of a mother or father, unresolved grief only delays your natural grieving process.
Grieving Your Own Way
Everyone grieves uniquely. Your distinctive circumstances create specific issues to sort out. You don’t “get over” the death of a parent; you process and release grief at your own pace. You may ask, “How can I be okay with being selfish after the loss of a parent or spouse?” I’m not saying to be selfish, but don’t forget about your own health and needs.
Resources for Grief
To find book, audio, and video products about grief and loss, go to the Web sites of In-Sight Books, Roberts Press, Compassion Books, the Grief Recovery Institute, or Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. Other insightful and helpful books about grief include This Thing Called Grief, I Wasn’t Ready to Say Good-bye, and the daily reader Healing after Loss. If you find yourself thinking about your parent’s death and his or her well-being after death, you might want to check out Life after Death, What They Saw . . . at the Hour of Death, Life after Life, or the Bible.
Resources for Time Off Work
You may not be able to afford to quit or jeopardize your job. If possible, though, try to reduce your job from full-time to part-time or at least take off as many days as possible without causing problems. If receiving time off work is an issue for you, contact your employer or your local U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour District Office to see if you qualify for twelve weeks of legal leave from work through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Read the section “Time Off from Work” in chapter 3 for more information.
Resources for Eating Healthy after Loss
Food may be the last thing on anyone’s mind, but when hunger strikes, available food brings comfort. Friends will ask how to support you. An easy answer is to ask them to make or order food to be delivered to your home. Friends who want to provide support with food needs can either cook meals for you or arrange a week or two of fresh meal delivery for your family from companies such as Gourmet Grocery Online, Dinewise, Home Bistro, or Magic Kitchen. Food gift baskets from catalogues such as Harry and David also provide healthy eating options for grieving families. Another option is to have friends arrange for personal chefs like Big City Chefs to come to your home to make food for your family. Organic food is another healthy food choice for friends or family members during times of grief. Arrange to have it delivered to the home from companies such as Diamond Organics. Friends can also order takeout from local restaurants and have food delivered from a service such as Takeout Taxi. Even small gifts of food from other people bring you and your family comfort and reduce stress. If you live far away from your parent, friends can order groceries to be delivered to your parent’s home. Online grocers who make home deliveries include Amazon, Peapod, Netgrocer, and Safeway. Let someone else exert energy picking out groceries and delivering them. You and your parent need to conserve all your energy and reduce the daily decisions you need to make.
Resources for Additional Funeral or Memorial Service Help
If you need additional funeral or memorial service assistance outside family members, friends, clergy or funeral directors, try contacting the National Association of Professional Organizers to find a professional organizer. Your local Chamber of Commerce may provide referrals of event planners to aid in organizing a memorial service. For more information on planning a funeral or memorial service, read the next section, “Create an Energy Team”. Check out Part III: Resources, under “First Weeks after Loss” for more grief, funeral, and memorial service resources.
Questions to Ask about Only Doing Essential Tasks
1. Why does my parent or I have to do everything?
2. What do I miss when I let a few things go?
3. What few comforting things can I do for myself if I have extra time? Speak with a grief counselor? Get a nurturing massage? Take a long walk?
4. What can I postpone until later?
5. What can I not do or what simply doesn’t have to be done at all?
Go ahead and flex your muscles from time to time, but try to let friends and family take over when you need a break. Down the road, you will get a chance to flex your muscles for them. Life promises that fact.
What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
--GEORGE ELLIOT
CREATE AN ENERGY TEAM
When you snow ski down a “black diamond” run for the first time, navigating the hill’s unexpected moguls and hazardous ice patches can be quite a challenge. A sudden blizzard can make it worse. Back at the top of the mountain, your skiing buddies offered encouragement and spiked your confidence. They promised to pay for a large hot cocoa and lunch if you arrived inside the lodge in ten minutes. Halfway down the run, your friends’ waves revive your motivation to keep going.
Sometimes we all need someone else to fill us with hope and encouragement when we are pushed to our limit. If you forge alone through the first weeks after the loss of a parent without an assembled support team, you might push yourself beyond what you can handle. When you’re alone, the work and grief loom large. With support, burdens shrink.
How to Remedy Low Energy
One solution is for you to create an “energy team” from the beginning. An energy team is a group of friends or family members taking on separate funeral or memorial service duties, which allows immediate family members to conserve energy for essential tasks. An energy team provides motivating vigor, liveliness, and oomph for you when you are depleted.
Over the next few months, your depleted energy because of loss and grief might only be able to help you manage a few critical jobs for your widowed parent. Your body needs to conserve energy for the transition that lies in the days ahead. During the first weeks after loss, with an energy team in place, you conserve energy that will pay off in the days, months, and even years ahead.
Our Story
After the eleven-month nightmare of my father’s failing health, the last tasks we wanted to tackle were creating plans for a funeral and multiple memorial services, but choices and decisions were required. Thankfully other family members, whom were in the Houston hospice when Dad died, took care of managing the delicate procedures with the funeral home and cremation facilities.
At my parents’ home, we numbly made calls and sorted three months of mail, energized solely by coffee or diet colas. We tried to sleep, but almost nightly we took prescribed or over-the-counter sleeping pills to aid our restless nights. We had lots to do to plan the funeral and services and we had no energy.
How to Build an Energy Team
Unfortunately for us, we took on most of our tasks ourselves. If I had everything to do all over again, I would gather seven friends or family members with various talents and ask them to be our energy team. Our energy team could’ve supplied the energy we lacked for tasks.
Build your energy team and watch yourself call on them again and again. A team consists of energy team managers, funeral managers, memorial service planners, writer/Web site designers, house-sitter coordinators, home and estate organizers, and a small transportation team. You may not need all seven positions; we could have used them all. In choosing to have more than one person working on each job, the workload is less burdensome. With two people per team, people can discuss choices together and cover for each other when one person has an emergency or is out of town.
Energy Team Managers: The first members of the team, the energy team managers, are close friends of the family who work as a contact between the family and the rest of the team. If possible, they live in the community where the funeral and memorial service will be held. The main three jobs for the energy team managers is to assist the other managers on the team; track gifts, food, and other assistance provided during the first few weeks after loss so the family members can send thank-you notes later; and gather a meeting with the energy team members and the family.
The energy team members can initially gather the rest of the team members with the family to meet and discuss the family’s needs and specific requests and introduce themselves to each other. This meeting can also function as a brainstorming session to make a list of others to fill empty positions. By setting up this meeting, the family can state their wishes once to everyone involved, freeing up their energy to tend to their grief and other needs.
Funeral Managers: Ask your most decisive friends with prior experience with funerals to manage details with the funeral home. These funeral managers can present to the family reduced selections and options regarding urns or caskets; take care of cremation, organ donation, or embalming requests of the family; and handle burial plot questions and calls from the funeral home. The funeral managers coordinate plans with a minister, rabbi, or other spiritual advisor for the family. The handling and positioning of flowers, donation materials, sign-in books, and framed photographs are other tasks for the funeral managers. If family members want to play a larger role in the funeral decision-making process, their direct involvement with your funeral managers and funeral director may assist in the family members’ grieving process.
The many decisions a funeral requires are overwhelming. Many online resources make your many choices easier. If you or your funeral managers have questions about funeral protocol, read Emily Post’s etiquette book’s chapter on grieving and condolence. The Funeral Planning 101 Web site offers all kinds of information on planning funerals, including contrary religious traditions, writing a eulogy, funeral costs, and memorials. The National Funeral Directors Association Web site connects you to grief-related organizations, discusses end-of-life issues, and provides a list of charitable organizations. Read about the Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule Law as well as its two informative brochures about your rights as a consumer when you purchase funeral goods and services. If your deceased parent was a veteran, you can ask your funeral manager to call the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for information on funeral, burial plot, and other death benefits available to your family. Refer to the books Caring for the Dead or Facing a Death in the Family for more detailed funeral information. Also, see appendix D for information about payment options for funeral homes. If you are on a tight budget, go to the Funeral Help Web site. Funeral Help offers advice and a book on saving money in planning funerals. For information on bereavement airfares, go to the About Web site and type in “Family Emergencies and Bereavement Fares.” Also try the Smarter Travel Web site and review its article on bereavement fares.
Memorial Service Planners: Your most competent juggler and detail-oriented friends should be your memorial service planners. Friends who regularly plan parties, weddings, or special events may be a good selection. Your memorial service planners coordinate the memorial service and location(s), create the invitation list, screen phone calls from the service location, and coordinate food and beverages. Your memorial service planners can also handle the flowers, donation materials, sign-in book, and framed photographs if these are not supervised by the funeral manager. Memorial services typically take place at a church, restaurant, favorite place of the deceased, your home, the beach, or wherever seems appropriate for your family’s needs. For alternative memorial services, see the Eternal Reef Web site or AARP’s “Ways to Remember” article on its Web site. If you need charitable organization ideas, go to the Guidestar Web site.
Writers and Web Site Designers: Your next team members to identify are obituary writers and Web site designers, if you want to create a memorial Web site. The best people for the job are close friends with good writing or computer skills who knew your deceased parent.
Your writers work with the family to write an obituary. An obituary creates a biographical account of a person’s life in a summarized form. The obituary might include a person’s life’s work, education, awards, achievements, and surviving family members. You will also want to list where people can make donations in the deceased’s name, where to send flowers, and any Web site created in honor of the deceased. Take a look at Legacy for ideas on obituaries from more than 175 newspapers. After the family approves the obituary, the writer distributes the obituary to the appropriate newspaper(s).