The last time I saw my father in person, which may be the last time I ever sit across from him, I spoon-fed him dinner the way he spoon-fed me as a baby. His hair, soft as a duckling’s down, was longer than he’d ever kept it when he was younger, but it suited him. I held both of his hands in my other hand to keep them still, as I remembered different meals we’d shared throughout the past four decades.
In addition to the standard will, he encouraged his clients to write what some call an “ethical will,” but what he called a Legacy Letter, as a sort of road map of wishes ― to share beliefs, experiences, life lessons, even regrets, with the family members who would outlive them. Because of what he’s taught my siblings and me, and because of what I’ve seen happen to him, my husband and I often update our ethical wills on our computers. In my Legacy Letter, I tell my daughters what I want them to know after I’m gone. I offer practical advice: “Try not to let another person’s insecurities shape your own behavior and beliefs.” “Always approach dogs with your palm facing up to the sky, so the dog knows you come in peace. Approach some people like this as well.
In his phone calls to me, he’d stress: “Living well and taking care of yourself and each other is how you honor us.” In his line of work, he’d seen it too often: A family’s matriarch or patriarch died, and their children stopped living, through a variety of responses to the grief ― alcoholism or drug abuse, profound depression, suicide.
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