Personal Lifelong Informed Decision-Making Journey
“In order to align your life choices with your values, you will need to inquire about the effects of your actions (and inactions) on yourself and others. Although we are always stumbling upon new knowledge that shifts our choices and life direction, bringing conscious inquiry to life means that we continually ask questions that lead us to the information we need to make thoughtful decisions. Asking questions is liberating because we develop great understanding and discover more choices with our new knowledge.”― Zoe Weil
Introduction
Informed Decision-Making creates a safe learning environment where students feel free to engage, interact, and contribute to their individual learning and success. As a lifelong learner, I am currently not teaching in my job, and I have not facilitated many learning or tutoring experiences for quite some time. There have been pressing, relevant personal circumstances, of equal and utmost importance each day for my family and me. For the past ten years of my life, I had to make an informed and difficult decision to put aside my own priorities. I took my aging and ailing mother into my home to become her primary caregiver and provider as she lived out the remainder of her days fraught with health issues etc. My mother chose me, from among my other siblings, to help her live out and prepare for her remaining days on this earth. I made the tough decision to take on this responsibility, as my mother could no longer care for these decisions for herself. What I didn’t know at the time I took on this critical responsibility, was the depth of information, resources, and knowledge I would have to research and request to assist with my mother’s day-to-day healthcare and safety while I was at work. I took over all of her business decision-making and preparations and planning for her end-of-life celebration. Although my four siblings supported me in my choices and decisions concerning our mother’s health and best interests, I was solely responsible for preparing, researching, requesting assistance, securing daily caregivers, and assuming financial responsibilities. I also discussed end-of-life plans and wishes (including Wills, Power-of-Attorney…) directly with my frail mother, just the two of us, which is the way she intended and expressed to all of her five children. I’ve posted the audio obituary that I personally wrote and presented at her funeral about six months ago as evidence of this long, arduous, decision-making process. I also prepared a sequential digital photo video collage of the legacy and life that mom left behind. This was very difficult for me to do, but I know she chose me to take care of this life-wide and circle-of-life experience for her for a reason. I am blessed that she was my mother and grateful that my four siblings supported my mom and me throughout this end-of-life process. We were also grateful that we had the time to plan for this experience, which is often not the case.
Informed Decision-Making creates a safe learning environment where students feel free to engage, interact, and contribute to their individual learning and success. As a lifelong learner, I am currently not teaching in my job, and I have not facilitated many learning or tutoring experiences for quite some time. There have been pressing, relevant personal circumstances, of equal and utmost importance each day for my family and me. For the past ten years of my life, I had to make an informed and difficult decision to put aside my own priorities. I took my aging and ailing mother into my home to become her primary caregiver and provider as she lived out the remainder of her days fraught with health issues etc. My mother chose me, from among my other siblings, to help her live out and prepare for her remaining days on this earth. I made the tough decision to take on this responsibility, as my mother could no longer care for these decisions for herself. What I didn’t know at the time I took on this critical responsibility, was the depth of information, resources, and knowledge I would have to research and request to assist with my mother’s day-to-day healthcare and safety while I was at work. I took over all of her business decision-making and preparations and planning for her end-of-life celebration. Although my four siblings supported me in my choices and decisions concerning our mother’s health and best interests, I was solely responsible for preparing, researching, requesting assistance, securing daily caregivers, and assuming financial responsibilities. I also discussed end-of-life plans and wishes (including Wills, Power-of-Attorney…) directly with my frail mother, just the two of us, which is the way she intended and expressed to all of her five children. I’ve posted the audio obituary that I personally wrote and presented at her funeral about six months ago as evidence of this long, arduous, decision-making process. I also prepared a sequential digital photo video collage of the legacy and life that mom left behind. This was very difficult for me to do, but I know she chose me to take care of this life-wide and circle-of-life experience for her for a reason. I am blessed that she was my mother and grateful that my four siblings supported my mom and me throughout this end-of-life process. We were also grateful that we had the time to plan for this experience, which is often not the case.
NOTE: Thankfully, mother did not die from the COVID-19 virus!
The link Legacy, Sally Dora Gregson Stovall -- November 21, 1935 - August 5, 2020 takes you to a more recent technology artifact of my personal life's learning journey progressing through my mother's circle of life.
Reflection
Reflection continued below, completed during the process of me preparing digital artifacts of recent lifelong learning events in my life's journey, which allowed me to follow through with my thoughts for grieving purposes.
Reflection continued below, completed during the process of me preparing digital artifacts of recent lifelong learning events in my life's journey, which allowed me to follow through with my thoughts for grieving purposes.
Just shy of seven months ago now (the date of this reflection, 2/22/20,21) since the death of my beloved mother and best friend, it is still very raw, new, final, and heartbreaking to think about, let alone reflect upon. Not only was she my mother and friend, but she lived with me for the past ten years. For the last 6 years, she was on hospice and I was her primary caregiver. Eventually, with my siblings’ support, I made the difficult decision to put my mother in a nursing home, because her care and needs had now exceeded my ability to care for her at home alone. It was a very difficult decision and none of us knew what was to come months later. We all (her five children) determined to take turns going to visit her on specific days throughout the weeks, and then the 10 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren would visit on weekends as time permitted. Mom tolerated this "new normal" for herself fairly well until the first week in March of 2020, when I received a call, as her caregiver that they were no longer permitting face-to-face visitations for the residents. This was a safety measure in light of the recent news of a worldwide pandemic, COVID-19. Mom didn’t quite understand and often would lash out at us devastated that we just dumped her in this nursing home went on with our lives. Rationally, I know that this was just not the case, as we too were all equally devastated to think that we could not see our loved ones face-to-face or even touch them again. I know that our family was not an isolated event with experiences such as this. And I knew that it was solely due to the circumstances around us. But it ultimately prevented us from ever sitting next to her face-to-face, hold hands, or enjoy her final days with her loved ones by her side. Finally, in reflecting on this life wide learning experience, I know that I did the very best that was humanly possible as her live-in caregiver for the last ten years of her long and fruitful life.
Reflection
It is still extremely painful to think back on the last year of her life in “my hands.” I thought I was prepared (as she groomed me throughout my life to that point) to help make her remaining years meaningful as she transitioned from one life to another. But I still cannot believe that things, circumstances, plans, and numerous lifelong and life wide informed decisions played out for her life, care, final moments the way that they actually did. And then, how I managed to see her plans, decisions, and wishes come to fruition just the way she instructed me to, years earlier. I knew then, but only now as I sit here reflecting on this life’s learning experiences that my individual immediate family tree and legacy has ended. I am single, my father, mom’s soulmate died of cancer when he was 51 years old (I had just turned 16 years old). I have never been married, and never had any children of my own. Thankfully, I have love and comfort from three amazing sisters, a brother, and now “extended family” of in-laws, nieces, nephews, and droves of great-nieces and great-nephews to vicariously live out the remainder of my life’s journey. I embrace whatever God has in store for me, a member of a newly titled generation with my siblings as matriarchal and patriarchal figures. We did not choose this new role but carry on for the generations following us.
It is still extremely painful to think back on the last year of her life in “my hands.” I thought I was prepared (as she groomed me throughout my life to that point) to help make her remaining years meaningful as she transitioned from one life to another. But I still cannot believe that things, circumstances, plans, and numerous lifelong and life wide informed decisions played out for her life, care, final moments the way that they actually did. And then, how I managed to see her plans, decisions, and wishes come to fruition just the way she instructed me to, years earlier. I knew then, but only now as I sit here reflecting on this life’s learning experiences that my individual immediate family tree and legacy has ended. I am single, my father, mom’s soulmate died of cancer when he was 51 years old (I had just turned 16 years old). I have never been married, and never had any children of my own. Thankfully, I have love and comfort from three amazing sisters, a brother, and now “extended family” of in-laws, nieces, nephews, and droves of great-nieces and great-nephews to vicariously live out the remainder of my life’s journey. I embrace whatever God has in store for me, a member of a newly titled generation with my siblings as matriarchal and patriarchal figures. We did not choose this new role but carry on for the generations following us.