Insisting on the Final Word

Happy Fernandez, a joie de vivre

She had polio at age 10 and fought back to become a competitive tennis player. Seeing her on the court, even at age 73, was like watching a performance of balance and grace, her friends said. Then there was her mind – sharp, engaged.

And if anyone had a question about her stubborn determination, it was answered by her extraordinary living will.

When Happy Fernandez suffered a massive stroke recently, her family knew exactly what they had to do. She left no possibility that she might continue living if it were not in the fullest possible way. Plus, she didn’t want to be the recipient of extensive – and futile – medical care.

Have you written your living will? Would you make such a choice?    

With her family’s permission, here are excerpts from Happy’s living will, written several years before her death last month (the bold is all hers):                                                                                  

"I want this letter to supplement any living will to make clear how I feel.

Seeing … many older people … 'ware housed' and kept alive by drugs and food at great expense to the public via Medicare and other health care systems, I do NOT want to be kept alive by any machines, medicines or other means when I have lost mental and physical abilities to care for myself. If I am in a state where I no longer am able to ask for assistance to die with dignity, this letter should be taken as a directive and request.

I do not want health care services to be wasted or used to keep me alive when by accident, stroke or other mishaps I am not able to speak, feed myself, walk, see, hear and/or otherwise function as a human being. Please do not use any means to keep me alive – surgery, nutrition, drugs, etc. I am appalled at “wasting health care resources” to care for me if my mind and/or body are so wasted. I have lived more than a full life – every day is a gift after having polio at age 10 and the scare of post-polio syndrome in 1992. I have lived a full and useful life and feel ready to die if a stroke, heart attack, brain tumor or other terminal disease strikes me.

I want any public or private family or insurance dollars to be used to nurture the development of the next generation, here in the United States or in other democracies such as India, who are faced with huge problems of poverty and the mistreatment of women and children.

I would like to be allowed to starve to death or die quickly of pneumonia or an infection if I have some such disease or accident. Please take this as an honest and binding addendum to any living will that I have signed.

I realize that this is very difficult for my sons and my beloved Dick who I have loved so much since we met in 1959 at Sebago, but please respect my wishes and do not prolong my life, which has been filled with so many joys of loving you and your families.

A Happy Life Partner, Mom and Mama.”

If you’re reading this on a phone and wish to comment, please go to www.unRetiring.blogspot.com

Can you retire your EGO?

Phil Goldsmith  has had more careers than anyone I know -- lawyer, journalist, deputy mayor,  bank executive, head hunter. He also ran  Fairmount Park, the Philadelphia School District, and as managing director, ran the city itself. Between some of those gigs, he wrote a book, took up drumming, trained as a spinning instructor, and tried his hand at art.
You might say the man craves challenges.
Now that Phil has left full-time work,  he says he's facing his biggest challenge ever -- to try to figure out what he really wants to do rather than do the things that help him feel important.

 

                       "Am I doing that because it's good for my ego?" --Phil Goldsmith
"When I first left the city in 2005, anything that came my way I agreed to do. So before  I knew it, I was on  7 or 8 boards. And that was just to fill my time and to make me feel important because I no longer had the importance of title. So you find other ways to feel important or find meaning.  And after a while you spread yourself too thin and you start to question whether

Moving on from my "mid-life career"

I hate the word “retired.”  Ditto “retirement.”

“How are you enjoying retirement?” friends ask me, not understanding that I am busier than ever reinventing myself.

So, today I checked the dictionary to see if my repulsion is justified by the word’s meaning.

Yes, indeed! According to the American Heritage Dictionary,  retire  means “1) To withdraw, as for rest or seclusion; 2) To go to bed; 3).To withdraw from one’s occupation, business or office; stop working. 4) To fall back or retreat, as from battle” and so on.

More interestingly – and in step with how the boomers are redefining a step-back from career --  the dictionary goes on to give some background on the word retire.

“Despite the upbeat books written about retiring and the fact that it is a well-earned time of relaxation from the daily rigors of work, many people do not find it a particularly pleasant prospect. Perhaps the etymology of retire may hint at why. The ultimate source of our word is the Old French word retirer, made up of the prefix re -- , meaning in this case 'back' and the verb tirer, 'to draw,' together meaning 'to take back or withdraw.'…It is not until 1667 that we find the word used to mean ‘to withdraw from a position for more leisure.' "

Tirer, the dictionary goes on to say, “ultimately may be from the Old French martir, 'a martyr,' probably reflecting the fact that martyrs had to endure the torture of being stretched up to and beyond the point of dislocating their bones.”

Well, my job was never a bone-pulling event,. I loved it! though my husband sometimes complained about the dislocation of our family when I came home late.

So, a plethora of phrases  are now being invented to describe ‘unretirement,” including “encore careers,” “third age careers, and “second adulthood.”

Similarly, new organizations are seeking to harness this explosion of people with energy and (supposedly) time, including Coming of Age,  and Civic Ventures, which runs Encore Careers which, amazingly, links you to “encore fellowships.” 

The fellowships link people at the “end of their midlife careers with social-purpose organizations.”

Hey, I like that. I’m just winding up my “midlife career” and embarking on the next…..

Jonah's rendering of UnRetiring

Needing a change from looking at my photo, I commissioned Jonah, 8, to reimagine my blog's name.

What do you think? Should I sub this for the red dress photo?

"I forgot to re-tire my tires!"

David Broida discovers a new passion

By the time that  David Broida turned 62, he'd been director of the Upper Merion Parks and Recreation Department for 32 years. He was ready to move on.  "I wanted to explore new things," he says, and  "the incentive of Social Security helped on the money side." Not that he hasn't been exploring things his whole life. Broida created and ran the Upper Merion Music Festival for 23 years, raised thousands of dollar for AIDS research, volunteers at homeless shelters, and serves on the board of  Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis in Philadelphia,  which focuses on under-resourced families  http://www.ashetennis.org/.  And I know I've left out a lot, including  that he’s a musician who regularly jams with friends. 

David and I rode our bikes through West Philadelphia the other day – a winding route that took us past abandoned tennis courts, cracked with weeds. "For $100,000 all these courts could be fixed," said Broida, who has collected coats from the lost-and-founds of suburban schools and donated them to kids in the city. Later on, we rode through the University of Pennsylvania’s $46.5 million dollar new PennPark, where the tennis courts, with bleachers, could host a mini-Wimbledon.

New Courts At PennPark

Weedy Courts, 52nd and Wyalusing

Over coffee,  we talked about his journey. David’s  best advice is to “do something different.”

He stepped into his “retirement” fairly typically:

“For  the first two months, I just cleaned up the house a little. I really didn't do anything. I just read. .. rode my bike, played tennis. I just played.”

Then, something happened that lit his fire. As a former administrator, responsible for budgets and the like, he didn’t want to do that again. But when the Shipley School suddenly had an opening for a tennis instructor, he signed on.

“I was lucky” he explains. That led to a new career teaching tennis in public and private programs, still leaving him time for his myriad other interests, including launching the Bryn Mawr Twilight concerts, which run each weekend in summer.

“My advice for myself was just to follow my interests.  … What's really nice is to do something completely different from what you've been doing.”

Send me your story, or suggestions of folks to interview at dottyinky@gmail.com