Excuses, Excuses

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

- Don Marquis, humorist

Situation Normal, All Fouled Up

Tim Johnson's mom and dad were typical Depression-era parents. Tim's dad was a manager at a local pipe-fitting plant for nearly forty years. Having started out as a laborer, through his own drive and initiative, he eventually became plant manager of the family-owned concern. Tim's dad retired nearly seven years ago, with a comfortable pension and the promise of a comfortable, if not extravagant, retirement.

Tim's mom retired a year before Tim's dad, after a thirty-five-year career as a registered nurse at a local hospital. Together they are able to cover all their bills and even have some money left over for trips, gifts for the grandkids, and their church tithe. Nevertheless, like many who grew up in the great depression, they have never felt economically secure. As a result, money has always been a taboo subject within the family.

Over the past several years, Tim approached his parents obliquely on numerous occasions about whether they had their affairs in order and whether there was anything they needed to do to make sure that things continued to go as they wanted them to in the future. Tim's dad reassured him each time that all the documents needed were "locked down tight" in a safe place. When Tim pressed his father for copies of those documents, however, his dad would always reply, "They're in storage. I'll get 'em for you next week." But "next week" would never come.

Tim was unable to press his mom about this because she left the family finances and legal affairs up to her husband. In fact, the only checks she'd write since getting married were for the groceries and the electricity bill. Though concerned about whether his dad really did have everything in order, Tim didn't want to confront him and potentially create a scene. Instead, he chose to trust that his dad knew what he was doing. Then the unexpected happened.

Tim's mom and dad were involved in a car accident on their way to church. Tim's dad was severely injured and lapsed into a coma from which he has not yet emerged. The doctors are not sure if he will come out of it but consider it likely that if he does, he will be paralyzed from the waist down due to his injuries. Tim's mom suffered a head injury that has limited her speech, voice, and cognitive abilities. She remains in critical care in the intensive care unit of the same hospital where she worked for thirty-five years.

Upon hearing of the accident from a neighbor, Tim immediately called the hospital only to be told that unless he had a health care power of attorney on behalf of his father and mother, no one would be able to speak with him directly.

Tim frantically began searching his parent' home for the documents his dad had told him were all in order. He finally found a box marked "important papers." Inside were his parents' respective wills and a living will, a general power of attorney, and a health care power of attorney – everything his dad had assured him was "locked down tight." Except that they weren't as "locked down" as his dad thought: none of the documents were signed!

There was a four-year-old letter from the family lawyer instructing Tim's parents to sign the documents, but no follow-up correspondence. When Tim called the lawyer's office, he was told the man had retired and that his records, if there were any, had been placed in storage.

Thinking the local bank might be able to help, Tim went there, but the branch manager, while sympathetic to Tim's plight, was prohibited by bank policy from discussing a client's affairs with anyone without signed authorization.

Tim's next course of action was to seek out an elder care law attorney who specialized in such matters to see if he could break the impasse. After thumbing through the phone book, he finally located one who, for a retainer of $5,000, said he would begin proceedings with the court to have Tim appointed as guardian. The lawyer told Tim that it could take as long as ten days to get before a judge, even for an emergency hearing, and cautioned him that even though Tim was the Johnsons' son, when they did get a hearing it would not be an automatic decision on the part of the court to appoint him guardian. Tim had no choice but to adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

In the interim, the hospital was treating his parents under what is called a "prudent professional" standard of care, meaning the hospital's lawyers have advised the doctors not to do anything that "could come back to haunt the hospital later." Tim could continue to visit his parents, of course, but until the court order was issued declaring him guardian, he was not able to obtain any essential information from the attending nurses, aides, or staff physician. He could only look on helplessly as his father and mother received the "do no harm" standard of care.

While this story may seem extreme, even almost contrived, every word of it is true. Worse still, cases like it occur throughout the United States, Canada, and most of the industrialized world every day. The moral of the story is that parents who think they are shielding their children from worry and stress by not discussing the realities of their situation with them are only setting their children up for worry and stress when the you-know-what hit the fan. And the children they want to shield only compound the problem for themselves and their parents by going along, or making possibly false assumptions so as not to rock the boat.

Nine Common Excuses for Doing Nothing

In this chapter I'll share with you the nine most common excuses people just like Tim and his parents make for avoiding or not following through on the parent care issue. Often, people are not even aware of making these excuses. Being aware of them, however, is the first step toward getting beyond them and opening the door for a frank and useful conversation.

See if any of the excuses resonate by reminding you of your family situation.

Excuse 1: "My parents have money, property, and papers scattered all over the place. Even they aren't sure where everything is. There's no way to deal with a situation like that."

This is called the "all must be perfect" syndrome. Unless your parents are accountants or engineers, the odds of finding...