The Talk

I've been thinking a lot about family planning, and I had The Talk recently. You know the one: I had The Talk with my 81 year old father. We had The Talk about his estate. It’s really hard to raise our parents these days.

"How do you see your life in 5 years? Where’s the will? Where are the health directives? Do you have a digital copy of [insert legal agreement here]? What can we do now to make your 5 year vision true?"

This was much harder yet surprisingly much easier than expected. Harder, in that when my father said, “I don’t like facing my mortality…” it just broke my heart. I can understand how he views The Talk this way.

Easier, in that I chose an achievable goal for The Talk: What’s the goal of the first meeting? To get a second meeting. That was my goal going into The Talk, to have him agree that this was the first of many conversations, and we got there (mostly, but that’s a story for another post).

We can have The Talk with our parents or grandparents, too. We can prepare now so we are ready for later. We can help move our families, forward…