“Pulling death out from the shadows and examining it in the light does not make death happen. In fact, it does just the opposite. Thinking about death, learning about it and accepting it makes life happen.”
    New Yorker Magazine cartoonist Roz Chast knows about trying to discuss difficult topics with unwilling parents:
    Roz: “Do you guys ever think about things?
    Her parents in their nineties: “What type of things?
    Roz: You know things. Plans. I have no idea what you guys want! (Both parents look at each other in great discomfort). Let’s say something happened! (Both parents smirk and giggle in awkward response). Am I the only sane one here? (Pause, no parental response). You know what forget it! (In full exasperation...) Never mind! Que Sera Sera.” (After she leaves, both child and parents breathe a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to have “the discussion”).
    Chast is the author of Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomburg Press, 2014). She tells the tale many know all too well. Parents are in decline, refusing to discuss intimate feelings and plans, coping in their own-with blinders on-manner. Chast tells her story in cartoon and in journal style handwritten entries. It follows from the first crisis (Mother’s injuries from a fall) to the move to an assisted living facility, to Dad’s fall and enfeeblement to his death and finally Mother’s mental and physical degeneration until her death two years later.
    The visual images of recreated conversations are poignant and all too familiar for the many who stumble through tough realities without discussion. The humor takes the edge off the topic.
    Why is it so tough to talk about life’s most important decisions? Bill Geist (journalist and familiar face on CBS Sunday Morning) and son Willie Geist (Today Show & Morning Joe cohost) collaborated on an exploration of this topic. “Good Talk Dad: The Birds and the Bees and Other Conversations We Forgot To Have” relives the many times they avoided heart to heart conversations. It seems both are comfortable with this avoidance over their decades. The one exception was when the elder Geist hid his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease for ten years. Son Willie and his sister heard the news when the older Geist went public with the revelation. This type of non-discussion seems to happen in many families. Wille Geist reflected, “We kind of wondered, what was it about us that we didn’t have these big conversations?”
    Any funeral director or arrangement counselor has experienced the utter frustration when the surviving spouse and children sit before them to discuss decisions that they have never dealt with before. Exasperation, surprise and frustration are usually the results of such a meeting. The wife will commonly say “I could never get him to discuss it.”
    How do we encourage such conversations within a family before these talks become necessary final decisions? One such program is FAMIC (Funeral and Memorial Information Council)’s “Talk Of A Lifetime”. Several funeral associations such as the National Funeral Directors Association are encouraging funeral homes and final care providers to get these discussion tools in the hands of families now. A short video available for a website gives an overview of the program. Brochures and toolkits are available. Community presentations are encouraged. The idea is not just to discuss funeral plans but to get generations or spouses to talk about life issues. The brochure relays the program’s mission in a palatable way for a family. Its message: “There is a lot to talk about; Family, friends, hopes, dreams, accomplishments, pleasures, talents, values, the little details, the big events.” Now that is a discussion every family would like to make happen. Ed Defort wrote in the August 2013 Director, “The campaign will help people understand the value of talking with loved ones, about life, the things that matter most to them and how they want to be remembered when they die.”
    This program will hopefully inspire many other tools that can be used to promote conversation within families. If these programs succeed, it would change advance planning (Preneed) in a dramatic way. Families would have great comfort in expressing their ideas. Preneed counselors would not have to explain (in exasperation) why preplanning is an intelligent part of late life planning as the families would have already come to this conclusion through their open talks with each other.
    Roz Chast’s book should be read by all in funeral service. Chast and her parents never had what’s known these days as “The Talk” — an acknowledgement that their deaths were inevitable. This added much anguish to the slow slide to their demise; inevitable yet still avoided.
    All mortuary school students should have this book reviewed as part of their curriculum. The aspiring funeral directors can fully comprehend what many families have gone through before they arrive at the funeral home’s arrangement office.
    Chast’s decision on memorialization was disappointing but consistent with the relationship she had with her parents. Not knowing what else to do, she placed their cremated remains in two containers that were special to each one and has them in her bedroom closet.
    “I like having my parents in my closet,” Chast writes in the book’s epilogue, “The thought of burying their cremated remain in an arbitrary hole in the ground does not appeal to me.” “Throwing their ashes off the side of a boat makes as much sense to me as tossing them in a wastebasket at Starbucks. And decanting them into a decorative urn placed on the mantelpiece in the living room is just…ugh.” “I think it (the bedroom closet) makes a nice home for them. Every time I open the door I see the boxes and I think of them.”
    If these “Unpleasant” topics could be part of a dialogue that was as comfortable as planning a wedding, anniversary or other family event, imagine some of the different final care decisions that would be made. It truly is time to talk.

    “When we move beyond the fear, the picture takes on different hues. For what could make life more valuable than the simple fact that it is limited? What could make living more miraculous, more dizzying joyful, than the mere knowledge that we don’t get to do it forever?”