Before Your Parent Dies, Part 1 (The Relationship Side)

I guess I’m just getting to be that age. I’ve had four good friends’ parents die in the last month. And, God bless me, I know that the pain of losing a parent is coming for me too.  I hope it’s 20 years from now… but it probably won’t be. 

My family has a funny relationship with the idea of our parents dying, because my mother lost her mother when she was just 15 years old. My grandmother, still a young woman, surprised everyone with a massive heart attack and, overnight, my mother became the de facto mom in her home: washing, cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the home fell on her. She was almost completely unprepared for those responsibilities, and was knocked sideways by the transition.  

So my Mama became obsessed with preparing me and my sister, so we couldn’t possible be caught in the same circumstance. She taught us independence as soon as possible: we made our own lunches for school (and had to get ourselves up and dressed), got our own clothes washed and folded, had chores around the house, and she got us cooking, too, by the time we were in junior high school.  Her enduring (and macabre) mantra was, “I may fall over dead, and then where will you be? …Make your lunch.”

Strange as that was to hear on a regular basis as a youngster, it DID groom me for preparedness and foresight. (…it also made me predisposed to get life insurance.)

But, having walked through many deaths as a pastor, and several now as a friend-of-the-grieving-son, I know that the emotional and spiritual fog that grieving a parent produces isn’t half of the trouble that arises. There are all sorts of practical questions, too:

• How do you even do this process? Getting a casket?! 
• How do you arrange a funeral? Who do I call? Do you cater those?!
• Will [the surviving parent] be okay? How can I help him/her? How long should I stay with her/him?  Do widows need counseling?
• People are everywhere, wanting to “help” somehow…  what can they do or give? Am I supposed to organize all this?
• And oh… all of mom’s/dad’s affairs! And their belongings! And the finances!! 

Egads.

Handling the loss of a parent is best undertaken before they’re gone, I’ve decided. It’s yet another of the many “use some forethought” issues that could benefit dramatically by a little early effort. So I’m gonna help you do just that. 

Because I have my feet firmly planted in two worlds (the spiritual and financial), let’s break this up that way, starting with the spiritual and relational. I recommend you do three things ASAP with your living parents:

1. Walk through forgiveness.

Every single person on earth has to do some kind of work in forgiving their parents. Maybe they lied to you, disappointed you, used you, or (in the rarest of cases) seemed so darn wonderful that you couldn’t take them off the pedestal of perfection. You wish they’d been more human.  You wish they’d have trained you in the Word of God. You wish they’d have been more affectionate… or less affectionate.  Or less needy… or more communicative.  WHATEVER. 

Did you know that unforgiveness separates you from God’s heart and produces all manner of torment? (It’s a spiritual force from the devil; that is its assignment.  It LOVES to separate you from God.) But there’s a way out of unforgiveness; it’s confession and repentance. Yes!

My strong advice is that you do business with God in prayer regarding your parents, each of them. Tell Him (or a good friend who’s willing to be a priest for you) specifically how they’ve disappointed or hurt you.  Go into detail.  Then declare them forgiven.  Say “I forgive them for being the way they are.” Confess that they need grace as much as you do, and ask God for His peace in your heart about them.  You’ll find that they grate on you far less, and your patience will increase for their foibles. DO THIS BEFORE YOUR PARENTS DIE, and you’ll have years of enjoying them for who they are, instead of resenting them for not being who you wish they were.

2. Affirm them.

Every birthday and anniversary and Mother’s/Father’s Day is a big fat opportunity for you to affirm your parents.  This is not a dumb idea. “Honor your father and mother so that it may go well with you and you will live long upon the earth.” Ephesians 6:2 

Tell your parents, at least on the three annual opportunities mentioned above, what stands out to you as being great about them. Tell them why you LIKE them; what you RESPECT about them, and how you want to EMULATE them. (I promise that, with some creative thinking, absolutely any parent can be affirmed, no matter how junky they’ve been in their parenting role.)

This isn’t just wise to do relationally, but it will help reinforce whatever forgiveness you’ve had to walk through. It will endear them to you as you think of their good points (and it’ll endear you to them too, which isn’t nothing), and it will ensure that you DON’T experience that awful feeling, when they pass, of “OH WHY DIDN’T I EVER TELL HIM HOW MUCH I ADMIRED HIM.”  That feeling is for the hell birds. We do NOT want to experience that feeling.  So go ahead and say it! Say that you love them, and why.  Say that you hope you’re a good son, and ask how to be a better one! SAY IT.

3. Talk about their deaths.

Well this little love fest just took a weird turn, I know. But just as you, when you started to have children, started thinking about a will and life insurance (you did that, right?), so your parents have SURELY considered plans they have around their own death, both short-term plans (regarding funeral, burial vs. cremation, etc.) and more permanent plans around their estate. They could do the Knives Out thing where everybody shows up at the reading of the will, with no idea what’s going to happen… or they could actually make things WAY easier by talking about things beforehand.

If they’re like my parents, they will have had this talk with you by the time you were 15… but probably not. Some people think it’s selfish to talk about what they want to have happen after they die (it’s not), or feel it improper to talk about a family estate before somebody’s on the receiving end of death benefits (THERE’s a grim term, “death benefit”). It’s not; if you’re thinking multi-generationally about your family’s five capitals, you’ll want to talk to your descendants about your hopes and plans.

I would also pepper my parents with questions about their vision for their grandchildren and great grandchildren, if you’re not already doing that.  If you’re surprised to find that your father left you with a million bucks (may it be so!), wouldn’t it be great to know that one of his wishes was that that money would be used to pay for the weddings and educations of your children? Or whatever.  How would you know that unless you talk to him about it?

4. Interview them.

I may have said this in some form in various places (or you might have actually heard examples of this actually happening on a podcast), but as often as it comes to mind, I want to be conducting an ongoing interview with my parents (do this with your wife as well). That means, I’m trying to get to know them better.  I want to know their preferences (“Would you rather live a long time with, say, a crippling disease, or a shorter time at full health?” “What’s your absolute dream vacation, with money as no object?” and other dinner party type questions), their vision for family (I want to know EVERYTHING about this one), and just more of their stories. I want them for me, and I want them passed down to my children, and their children! 

We’re telling a multigenerational story, right? So what’s the story!? What is God doing through my family? And how could I know unless I do the asking?

So Walk through forgiveness, Affirm your parents, Talk about death with them, and Conduct an ongoing interview with these precious members of your family!

Hopefully this gets your noodle cooking as to the kinds of ground you’d like to cover with your parents before they die (and if you have adult children… you can start covering YOUR info for THEM!)… I’ll be back next time to talk about a much more technical issue… FINANCES.

Until then: