Life/Death/Law

Nicole Taylor: How Community Foundations Can Help You Do Good Where You Live

Nicole Taylor, the CEO and President of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the country’s largest community foundation, talks to me about what community foundations are and how they make it easy for all of us to get off of the sidelines and make meaningful contributions in our communities. Whether you want to contribute to a fund for a particular cause, help endow your community for the long term, or open up a donor advised fund, learn how community foundations are powerful resources for anyone that wants to make a contribution to their communities, but doesn't know where to start. 

Think of the Community Chest cards in monopoly!

To find your local community foundation, click here for the Council on Foundations Community Foundation Locator.

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When classical pianist Adam Tendler received a surprise inheritance from his father he used it to commission 16 original works of music to explore the complexity of grief, loss, and inheritance. After each performance of the resulting program, Inheritances, he was struck by the way that the audience stayed in their seats, talking to each other. "This is something I've never seen before after a recital or any kind of classical music concert where people are just talking to each other about what just happened, usually they just make a beeline for the door.  And that's exactly what I wanted because I didn't want a program that was going to be so specific about my life and my experience and my father.I really wanted something as abstract and universal that people could just come to it and just enter it at wherever, wherever they needed to."

Join us for a conversation about  Adam's program, Inheritances, and his reflections about why he commissioned the work, how envisioning it and performing it helped him to understand his loss, and how the composers and audiences have responded with such intense connection to its universal themes.

To find out more about Adam's work, go to http://adamtendler.com/

To subscribe to my weekly Substack Newsletter, Life/Death/Law, subscribe here: https://lifedeathlaw.substack.com/

To listen to more episodes of Life/Death/Law, go to www.lifedeathlaw.com

AND THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR: https://www.redesigningtheend.com/  a professional education platform for the next generation of eldercare, senior housing, estate planning, and death care leaders.

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Tracey Walker, the founder of Let It Be End of Life Planning and the Program Director for End of Life Doula Training at Going with Grace, talks with me about what Death Doulas do, why they can be helpful in offering non-medical support to people facing death and their families in all kinds of ways, how to find a Death Doula if you or a loved needs support and how Death Doulas work with other care providers, like Hospice. You can also learn about queer end of life assistance, doula work for pet loss, and, if you listen very carefully, you can hear my dog, Tater, barking in the background.

To find out more about Tracey’s Doula services, go to https://www.letitbedeathdoula.com.

To find out more about finding a Death Doula near you, here are the resources that we discussed:

Going with Grace Death Doula Directory: https://goingwithgrace.com/death-doula-directory/

National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA) Doula Directory: https://goingwithgrace.com/death-doula-directory/

To ask a question for the show, email me at [email protected]

To subscribe to my weekly Substack Newsletter, Life/Death/Law, subscribe here: https://lifedeathlaw.substack.com/

To listen to more episodes of Life/Death/Law, go to www.lifedeathlaw.com

AND THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR: https://www.redesigningtheend.com/  a professional education platform for the next generation of eldercare, senior housing, estate planning, and death care leaders.

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Green Burial: Elizabeth Fournier, The Green Reaper

Elizabeth Fournier, owner and founder of Cornerstone Funeral Services in Boring, Oregon, and the author of The Green Burial Handbook, talks about what green burial is, what it isn’t, and how you can work with a funeral director to get the kind of burial you or your loved ones want. Learn about the surprisingly non-environmentally friendly footprint of traditional cremation and the new practices of aqua-cremation and organic reduction.

To find out more about Green Burial Resources: https://www.cornerstonefuneral.com/green-burial-resources

Elizabeth specifically mentioned the Funeral Consumers Alliance and the Green Burial Council during the show.

To ask a question for the show, email me at [email protected]

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That Good Night: Dr. Sunita Puri

Dr. Sunita Puri,  Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship at University of Massachusetts, and the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, talks about palliative care, what doing "everything" really means, and how to tell your loved ones and your doctors what you do and don't want at the end of life.

You can find her book and more about Dr. Puri here: https://sunitapuri.com/

And here’s a link to The Conversation Project, a resource for people seeking to have end of life conversations: https://theconversationproject.org/

To ask a question for the show, email me at [email protected]

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Donate Your Brain To Science: Tish Hevel, Brain Donor Project

In this episode of Women & Wills, Tish Hevel, CEO and Founder of the Brain Donor Project, explains why donating brain tissue for basic research is an incredible gift, helping researchers working to treat and cure neurological, neuropsychiatric, and neurodevelopmental disorders such as dementia and Parkinson’s.  Her father , Gene Armentrout (pictured above) wanted to donate his brain to science when he died in 2015. Back then, it wasn’t easy. This inspired Tish to create the Brain Donor Project, which works with the NeuroBioBank of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to make it easy for people to register in advance and arrange for brain donation upon death.

The donation of one brain will provide tissue for dozens, sometimes hundreds, of neurological studies. There is no cost to the family of the decedent, and a family can receive, upon request, a comprehensive report on the neuropathology of the donated brain. This report can provide answers for the relatives of the donor that may not have been answerable without a post-mortem examination.

Anyone over the age of 18 can donate their brain, and healthy brains are needed too. The Brain Donor Project makes it easy.

To find out more: braindonorproject.org

To learn more about brain donation: https://neurobiobank.nih.gov/donors-how-become-donor/

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In this episode of Women & Wills, Dr. Jessica Zitter, the producer and Director of the new movie, Caregiver: a love story talks about the crisis in family caregiver burden and how the movie she thought she was making, about the hospice experience of Bambi, a  59-year old woman, who decided to die at home under hospice care, became instead the story of how her husband, Rick, became her primary caregiver, and the toll it took on him.

In a verité fashion, the film takes you inside Rick’s journey as the caregiver, and highlights the issues faced by the 53 million non-professional caregivers working double-time and for free in jobs that they are completely untrained for.

If you are already a family caregiver, or are anticipating becoming one, listen to our conversation about family caregiver burden, what hospice can, and can’t do, and how to plan ahead for managing a truly difficult, but almost universal, experience.

To find out more about Caregiver: a love story, visit https://caregiveralovestory.com

To find out more about resources for family caregivers,  visit https://caregiveralovestory.com/resources

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If you are stuck at home and without basic legal documents, listen up. In the spirit of offering what I can to help people gain some piece of mind amidst the panic and uncertainty of the pandemic, here are some resources that you can use to get the basics in order, for now.

Although none of the documents I’m discussing take the place of a comprehensive estate plan, they are all good things to have. And most of them are documents that you can put in place with minimal or no expense as long as you have access to the internet, a printer, and some cooperative neighbors willing to stay six feet away while you sign them. Once you do sign them, place them in a safe place, let your loved ones know where to find them in case you do get sick, and then, please, go out and take a walk.

Advance Health Care Directives

An Advance Health Care Directive, also known as a Health Care Proxy or Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care  and Living Will in some states, appoints people to act as your Agents to make medical decisions for you if you are unable to make them for yourself.  

Here is a downloadable Advance Health Care Directive form for California that follows the California Probate Code’s statutory form.

The AARP offers free, downloadable Advance Directives for all fifty states here:

The California Hospital Association offers a free downloadable form for California here.

If you are a Kaiser member, Kaiser Permanente offers a downloadable form here.

If you would like to learn more about end of life planning and palliative care, please listen to Dr. Jessica Zitter’s interview on my podcast, Life Death Law. She has so much to say about how to be prepared, who to choose as your Agent, and how to negotiate a vist to the ICU.

DNR and POLST forms

A DNR Order tells emergency medical personnel that you don’t want CPR or other measures, such as intubation, if your heart stops beating. This form, however, needs to be signed by a doctor to be valid, so it’s not exactly a DIY resource. Still, if you are concerned, please do contact your doctor or local Health Department to find out how to get this in place.

A POLST form, which is often printed on bright pink paper, is another medical order that is similar to, but broader than, a DNR Order. The name stands for Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment and it is exactly that — a medically binding order that states what you do, and don’t, want at end of life. 

For more information about POLST forms, you can go here.

Durable Power of Attorney

A Durable Power of Attorney is a legal document that names Agents who can act for you financially, doing things such as writing checks on your behalf, paying your bills, managing your investments, withdrawing assets from your retirement accounts, and paying your taxes. 

California offers a simple Durable Power of Attorney as part of its Probate Code.  You can find this many places, but here’s one link.

Wills

A Will is the last on my list of basic estate documents that everyone should have. If you don’t write one, each state has a set of rules that will determine who will get your property at death (called the laws of intestate succession)  and a judge will have to appoint guardians for your minor children without any input from you. 

So, how can you make a Will right now, if you can’t leave the house? I have three suggestions:

1. If you live in California, you can download a simple fill-in-the-blank form offered for free by the State Bar Association here.
2. If you want to do a more customized Will, and you can afford to pay 89.99, you can use WillMaker, software that uses a question and answer format to produce Wills, Durable Powers of Attorney and Health Care Directives for all states, except Louisiana. You can download Quicken WillMaker and Trust 2020.
3. You can create an Online Will for $59.99 at Nolo.com for all states except Louisana.

In this episode of Life/Death/Law, Rebecca Soffer, the CEO and co-founder of Modern Loss, shares the insights she's gained from starting a ground-breaking website, Modern Loss, publishing a wonderful new book, Modern Loss: Candid conversations about grief. Beginner's Welcome, and hosting a national series of live storytelling events that discuss grief and loss in honest, vivid, and, above all, human,terms. Rebecca, and her co-founder and co-author, Gabrielle Birkner, both suffered loss at a young age, felt the isolation that comes with that, and decided to create a community to destigmatize grief and loss.

If you, or someone you love, is dealing with profound loss, Modern Loss offers community, great advice, and a place to share, in their own words, "the unspeakably taboo, unbelievably hilarious, and unexpectedly beautiful terrain of navigating your life after a death."

Here's what Modern Loss isn't: too clinical, overtly religious, patronizing, or cheesy. Instead, it offers well-written personal essays, tons of resources for the confused, links to relevant articles and a way to connect with others who understand what it means to survive loss. I loved my conversation with Rebecca, you will too. Enjoy!

Click here to find out more about Modern Loss.

Click here to find out more about Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome.

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In this episode of Life/Death/Law, Dr. BJ Miller shares insights from his new book, A Beginner's Guide to the End. Written with co-author Shoshana Berger, the book is practical, detailed, surprisingly funny and always completely honest. From what to bring with you to the hospital (your favorite quilt, your phone charger, pictures from home), to how to tell your boss that you are really sick, to how to cultivate sex and intimacy in the face of serious illness, this is a guide for both the sick and their caretakers.

Dr. Miller is a hospice and palliative care physician, practicing at UC San Francisco, and the former Executive Director of the Zen Hospice Project, so he knows, first hand, what he's talking about. He wrote the book, he told me, because he saw, over and over again, how people were suffering unnecessarily for lack of basic information.

But A Beginner's Guide isn't just a set of nuts and bolts instructions, it is also a wise and thoughtful guide to what's most important to people facing critical illness and those who care for them. Here's how Dr. Miller puts it, "In a nutshell, probably the biggest takeaway is that love matters...when a person watches their life come to a close, everything else falls away and it turns out that something as easy as love is so often the only thing that matters."

Click here to find out more about A Beginner's Guide to the End.

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