Ellen Goodman, Co-Founder and Director of The Conversation Project, says the primary reason people gave for not talking to their loved ones was “It’s too soon.” But it’s always too soon … until it’s too late.
“In some recess of my mind, I still assumed that death came in the way we used to think of as ‘natural.’ I thought that doctors were the ones who would tell us what needed to be done. I was strangely unprepared, blindsided by the cascading number of decisions that fell to me in her last years. I had to say no to one procedure and yes to another, no to the bone marrow test, yes and yes again to antibiotics. How often I wished I could hear her voice in my ear telling me what she wanted. And what she didn’t want.”
Read her New York Times blog post here… maybe it will help start your own conversation.
