Download
1 / 14
140 likes | 234 Vues
A Gift for Yourself and Your Loved Ones. End-of-Life Planning Groups with Trudy James. Trudy James.
E N D
A Gift for Yourself and Your Loved Ones End-of-Life Planning Groups with Trudy James
Trudy James, MRE, is a graduate of the University of Kansas and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. A trained hospital chaplain who spent 19 years creating faith-based Careteams for people with AIDS, she also worked as a per diem chaplain at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance for 5years. After retiring she created Heartwork, a consulting business that offers retreats, end-of-life planning, and one-on-one consultation. She facilitates and supports end-of-life planning from experience and with a compassionate heart.
“Death is a natural event—the only event all of us will share. It is also a mysterious event, because we seldom talk about it.” - Trudy James
“It is not easy to die well in modern times…. Because so many treatments now work, many people survive longer with one, or several, previously lethal conditions… people are sicker before they die today than ever before. At present, just over 20 percent of Americans are at home when they die… [and] over 30 percent die in nursing homes. Hospitals remain the site of over 50 percent of deaths, and nearly 40 percent of people who die in a hospital spend their last days in an ICU unit…. Up to a third of close family members of people treated in an ICU experience anxiety or depression consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder.” - The Best Care Possible, Ira Byock, MD
Session One: Why This Work Is Necessary • Introductions • Written Exercise • Personal Stories • Current Medical Environment/Statistics • Introducing the Five Wishes Document • Completing the Health Care Power of Attorney (Wish One)
Session One Written Exercise • Hand out plain white index cards • “Please write these words on your card: ‘When I die, I ________.’ Finish the sentence with whatever comes to your mind first. Don’t think about it.” • When cards are shared aloud, participants begin to see how many different perspectives there are about death.
Session Two:End Of Life Resources • Hospice • Palliative Care • Life Support Treatments • Death with Dignity • VSED • Organ Donation • CPR • Quality of Life • POLST Form • Completing the Living Will (Wish Two)
Session Three:The Dying Process • Letting Go • Grief Work • The Real Work of Dying • Care of the Body • Death Visualization Exercise • Near-Death Experiences • Legacy • Completing Wishes Three, Four, and Five
Session Four: Completing the Work • Memorials and Funerals/ Legacy • Legal Issues (with guest attorney) • Finishing the Five Wishes - witness (and notarize, if desired) • Conversations With Family, Physicians, Etc. • “What Comes Next?” - Spiritual Perspectives • Evaluations
Who Attends? Participants in A Gift for Yourself and Your Loved Oneshave included: • 40- and 50-year-olds – and their parents • 80-year-old mothers – and their daughters • schoolteachers, nurses, accountants, hospice chaplains, business owners, retired physicians and psychiatrists, retired military, students, lab techs, CMAs • Christians of many denominations, Buddhists, Sufi Muslims, Jewish persons, atheists, spiritual seekers, and pagans All who attend say that they greatly benefit from the diversity of opinions and perspectives about dying that are offered by others in the group.
Feedback • “Thanks for your carefully selected handouts, Trudy, and for the meaningful, beautifully-facilitated sessions. They have helped me come to terms with my own death and dying, and to talk openly to my family and doctor about it. I so appreciate the depth of your experience along with your empathy and compassion.” -- P.T., Congregation-based Five Wishes Group • “Taking the time to reflect existentially about impermanence and facing the feelings that arose for me was most helpful, as was the wonderful connection that developed with other group members.” -- R.W., Senior Center Participant • “It was such a relief to be able to speak openly about this subject, and to have an opportunity for thinking about all the issues and details that need to be addressed. I feel so much lighter.” -- L.V., Senior Retirement Community Group Member
Last Wishes Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face, or love in the eyes of a woman. Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain. Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play. Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week. Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk. If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses, and all prejudice against my fellow man. Give my sins to the devil. Give my soul to God. If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever. ~ Robert N. Test
“Peaceful death is really an essential human right, more essential perhaps even than the right to vote or the right to justice…. There is no greater gift of charity you can give than helping a person to die well.” - Soygal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
