Death and Dying

Done Up Like A Dogs Dinner

For the rich and famous who can be a little indecisive when will writing, some of the richer celebrities may be making headway in what to do with their millions when they die.

One New York billionaires who once said ‘only the little people pay taxes’ has taken charge of what happens to her dollars when she dies by leaving it all to dogs. Her family and friends get nothing while her dog – Trouble – gets several million dollars and dogs in general get billions.

This New York hotelier and real estate tycoon came up against her dilemma of what to do with so much money when it came to will writing and decided her ‘Queen of Mean’ image should stick after she dies. I’ve no doubt that wish has been brought to fruition – and not just for her meanness towards her employees!

An entire charitable trust valued at between five and eight billion dollars has been allocated for the care and welfare of dogs. There was an original plan when the billionaires first thought about will writing to leave a large amount of her estate for the aid of poor people but she obviously thought dogs would be a more worthy cause! There has been controversy over the will and it was claimed in court that she was not in her right mind when making her will so a judge ordered that her dog receive only $2 million instead of the planned $12 million.

Some stars prefer to leave their nearest and dearest out of their wills simply to teach them that life is hard and you only get somewhere by sheer hard work and determination. I, for one, think this a little mean. By all means, hold some back, but who in their right mind would not want to help their children out as best they could when they had the opportunity? Who would want to know that their children will struggle when they didn’t have to? Not so many years ago, it was the done thing that you worked hard all your life to leave some sort of a legacy for your children – not just a lesson that life is crap!

James Bond star, Sean Connery, has made headlines recently with the news that he will not be leaving any of his 85 pounds million fortune to his son, Jason. The relationship between father and son has, at times, been acrimonious over the years, and this is what has led to the difference of opinion. Connery states that he wants his son to learn the benefits of a career with hard work and to earn his own living. His own career began as barrow boy, lorry driver, labourer, coffin polisher, milkman and artist’s model so he certainly knows it’s no easy road.

This actor is not alone in the rich people that do not intend to smooth the future financial path for their offspring. Body Shop founder Anita Roddick gave away 51 pounds million to various sources before she died last year. Microsoft founder Bill gates and Paris Hilton’s rich grandfather have all dis-inherited their children for various reasons.

There are many emotive issues to take into consideration when will writing and many practicalities have to be covered also but at the end of the day, it truly is up to the individual as to what they do with their own money.

Legal expert Catherine Harvey looks at the way some people make will writing decisions that omit their families.

Utah Hospice Care; Helping People LIVE Until They Die

“We will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die”. –Dame Cicely Saunders

In 1967 Dame Cicely Saunders at St. Christopher’s Hospice in London first applied the term “hospice” to specialized care for terminally ill and dying patients. Today, hospice care provides humane and compassionate care for people in the last phases of incurable disease so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible in the time they have left.

Hospice is a philosophy of care. The Utah hospice care philosophy or viewpoint accepts death as the final stage of life, and the inevitable end of long term illness. The goal of Utah hospice care is to enable patients to enjoy an alert, pain-free life and to manage other symptoms so that their last days may be spent with dignity and quality, surrounded by loved ones. Utah hospice care affirms life and neither hastens or postpones death.

Utah hospice care treats the person rather than the disease; it focuses on the quality rather than the length of life. It provides family-centered care and involves the patient and the family in making decisions. Care is provided for the patient and family 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Utah hospice care can be given in the patient’s home, a hospital, nursing home, or private hospice facility. Most hospice care in the United States is given in the home, with a family member or members serving as the main hands-on caregiver.

Utah hospice care is suitable for individuals who no longer benefit from cancer, or other exhausting illness treatments and are expected to live 6 months or less. Hospice offers individuals palliative care, which is treatment to help relieve cancer or other illness-related symptoms, but not cure the disease; its main purpose is to improve the quality of life. You, your family, and your doctor decide together when Utah hospice care should begin.

One of the main problems facing hospice is that it is often not started soon enough. Sometimes the doctor, patient, or family member will resist hospice because he or she feels it sends a message of no hope of recovery. This is not true, if the patient gets better or the disease goes into remission, he or she can be taken out of the hospice program and go into active cancer treatment. The patient can re initiate Utah hospice care at a later time, if needed.

The hope that hospice brings is the hope of a quality life, making the best of each day during the last stages of advanced illness.

First Choice Home Health & Hospice (http://fchhh.com/) offers Utah hospice care to cancer patients in the final stages of their illness. The author Art Gib is a freelance writer.

A Spiritual Perspective on Sudden Infant Death

This was not a typical get-back-in-touch letter from a business associate who moved out of town some years ago. Instead, a mother wrote about the quiet death of her five-week-old daughter in the child’s car seat. It happened on the way to the home of baby’s grandparents, where the extended family was anticipating the arrival.

What should have been a joyous visit turned to stunned anguish.

Two and a half years later, the woman was just coming to terms with her tragic loss, which has a name: sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). There are all manner of statistics about SIDS, which annually in the United States claims roughly 7,000 babies between one month and one year old. There are several possible scientific theories about the causes of this still unexplained death of seemingly healthy infants.

Numbers and hypotheses, however, do little to assuage the agony of this most profound of losses. No parent should have to bury a child. It is an affront to the natural order of life. It is unjust and cruel. It hurts far worse than the cut of a knife or the impact of a bullet.

After the shock wears off, the nightmare sets in: painful feelings of rage, guilt, blame, recrimination, despair. Although so-called experts reassure the parents and other family members that they did nothing to cause this death, there is always that nagging doubt, always that what-if running in the back of the mind, always that yearning for a good-bye that never was said.

In the midst of such soul-troubling turmoil, words may seem useless or pointless. Even so, it might help, perhaps, to consider this tragedy from a spiritual perspective.

Our foremost consideration: death is never the end. The soul or spirit cannot die, and we need not take this assertion on faith alone. Having demonstrated that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, science backs up this assertion. The soul consists of energy–the energy of our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs, our emotions. Since energy is indestructible, the spirit does not die even at the demise of the physical body.

All of us, then, are undying soul-energies on a spiritual path that involves taking on numerous physical bodies for multiple interludes on earth. Endowed with free will, we choose our parents and lifetimes, and we do not always choose wisely. Sometimes we have second thoughts about the particular situation in which we find ourselves. We may
decide to withdraw our soul-energy and seek a different path. What was an apparently healthy baby dies as a result.

The death brings profound loss and anguish–not just to the parents or other family members, but also to the spirit that was the embodied child. And there is, rightly, a time and space for this grieving, and it is different for each being. We cannot “just get over it” until we are ready to do so, and we may need weeks, months, years, or even several lifetimes.

It is possible, however, for grieving parties to attain a measure of resolution once they are prepared to move on. The mother above wrote about attending a mind-body spirit retreat and, in a healing meditation, brought her daughter back into her heart. Doing so helped her move out of the denial stage of her grief and toward the resolution she so desperately needs.

Heart-centered mediation is an excellent tool for assuaging the grief from loss, whether of a child or any other loved one. This type of meditation can help both those still in body and those no longer on earth by providing a space and place to meet and converse in spirit.

A future column will outline the simple steps involved in a heart-centered meditation.

Candace (C.L.) Talmadge is the author of the epic fantasy Green Stone of Healing(R) series and a political columnist syndicated by North Star Writers Group. As StoneScribe, she blogs about the intersection of politics and spirituality.

Some Of The More Unusual Wills

Will writing is one of the most important documents you will be author to in your entire life. It is the last possible thing you can say to your loved ones, or others, before you are shuffled off this mortal coil.

And many take advantage of this. Some take their demise dead seriously and use it as a time to declare their undying love to their families, leaving them in agonising emotional turmoil but in no uncertainty about how you felt about them.

Some use will writing as the opportunity to have the last laugh on people they thing took advantage of them in life. Wealthy people often feel that their so-called friends are their friends because of their money and this is often the case. They get the last laugh by leaving all their worldly goods to their pets or the local dogs home or some other insignificant weird benefactor.

After kicking the bucket in 1991, a famous German Countess left 139 million German marks to her pet dog who then went on to live in the lap of luxury with a personal maid, chauffeur and custom built swimming pool.

A Danish woman no doubt took great delight at leaving all she had to a troupe of monkeys in the local zoo. Maybe she knew that in keeping with the law, the will would have to be read out to the benefactors which is exactly what the law abiding lawyer did.

Leo Tolstoy was a well known author but when it came to will writing he chose to demonstrate his mis-trust of people by bequeathing all his worldly goods to a tree stump in his garden. I wonder if the will was read out to this stump?

According to the history books, one Frenchman left all he had to the first person that could prove they had made contact with beings from another world. As expected, it has still been unclaimed. Unlike the affects of the Finnish will writing author who left all his worldly chattels to the devil. The government took it. Quite fitting really!

Of course, it’s not just money and possessions that can be left in a will. You can also leave requests for action , just like the man that left an order to surgeons to be paid to operate on him six days after death ensuring that his necrosis was complete and not some medical blunder.

Many wills are written by people that are simply eccentric and they turn up in the oddest places. The back of a wrist watch, the back of a postage stamp and even chalked on the back of a door. This whole door ended up having to be removed and taken to court as evidence.

Of course, one of the biggest problems solicitors face when dealing with wills is the possibility of forgeries. If a will is written on such items that have been documented, such as the rung of a stepladder, a matchbox or a petticoat then this doesn’t necessarily constitute ill will. However, it pays to look at the deceased usual behaviour. If they were of sound mind and body and not normally prone to eccentric behaviour, then the possibility of this type of will being taken as a fake should definitely be looked into.

Legal expert Catherine Harvey looks at how will writing can be quite diverse.

Why A Living Will Is An Essential Part Of Your Estate Plan

Winning the lottery? Writing a hit song? Having someone make medical decisions for you?

The first two may be unlikely, but more often than you may think, a stranger may make life or death decisions for you. There is a simple way to avoid this situation, but many people put if off for various reasons. What is it? A living will.

A living will is your written declaration which clearly states your wishes regarding the treatments you want or do not want in the event of a terminal illness or serious accident. It allows you to decide who you would want to make this decision if you are unable to do so.

In such a situation, most people would want to ease the burden placed upon their family and friends if they could. A living will makes it easier for your family and friends when they are faced with a crisis situation. It allows them to follow your wishes, which eases the pressures on them and helps avoid family disputes.

A living will has nothing to do with your property after your death, but protects your right to be treated in a particular manner before your death. It also does not deny you medication for pain although some paid medications may hasten death in certain medical circumstances.

After choosing to create a living will, the most important decision is deciding upon your personal health care representative. This should be a person you trust and who is emotionally stable to relay your wishes. Although many times this person is a family member, it does not have to be so. It could be your best friend, a companion or a religious person. Whoever it is, it is someone you trust to follow your wishes. It is also a good idea to have an alternate health care representative in case your first choice is unavailable.

Just as seasons and styles change, your relationship with your health care representative may change. A living will is flexible and may be changed at any time so long as you are mentally competent. It is also a good idea to review your estate planning documents such as a living will, power of attorney and last will and testament every few years to ensure they reflect your current wishes and situation.

So often our life is filled with missed chances. So do not delay. The next step is yours. Speak to your family, your family doctor or your religious advisor. Telling someone your wishes or writing them down on a piece of paper is a good start, but it is not legally binding. Decide what your choice would be and contact an attorney to help you convey your decision.

Nicholas Giuditta, an attorney in Cranford, NJ, has been assisting people in making their estate decisions for twenty years. For more information about living wills or estates, you may contact him at 908-709-1999 or visit his website at http://www.giudittalaw.com.