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Highlights:
Our Deepest Fears | Living Wills Can Fail | Surrogates Can Let You Down | A Legal Peaceful Choice | Why Caring Advocates

Whenever I go on a vacation, I hate all the planning, packing, and traveling required before I arrive at the resort. As I go through this process, I wish I could just snap my fingers and be there.

Planning for one's "last trip" may seem even less enticing since we'd rather not choose this particular destination…

Yet there are good reasons to plan ahead. If we don't create an effective plan in time, we leave ourselves vulnerable to months or years of pain and suffering. We also put our families at risk for extreme emotional and financial burden. Worse, our family may be torn apart by conflict and drawn into years of litigation, like the relatives of Terri Schiavo.

Many people are surprised to discover that the process of planning for the last chapter of life is a creative exercise that offers several types of satisfaction. Some people feel empowered from gaining control over this part of their future. Others view the process broadly as inviting inquiry into significant areas of life that include the spiritual, ethical, moral, and religious. For example, what is the essence of being human?

Let's face it, our two greatest end-of-life fears are:

• Being forced to endure prolonged pain and suffering, when there is no hope for recovery if our brains are still intact; and
• Being forced to continue to exist when our brains are so devastated by trauma or dementia that we are no longer aware and cannot respond.

We learn from others' experiences that we are vulnerable to sabotage instead of the honoring of our last wishes so we must add these three additional fears:

• Our Living Wills may fail for several reasons, including: those who care about us may argue endlessly about how to interpret what we wrote, our document may not be found, and our future doctors may choose to ignore our written wishes by deciding that other factors are more relevant;
• Our designated surrogates may let us down if they are too emotional, too weak to advocate for our wishes against awesome challenges, or are just not available because of their own illness or death; and
• Powerful people who don't know us may be motivated by their own political or religious agendas instead of honoring our wishes.