As our parents age, we know that their death is inevitable. It can happen suddenly or linger over a period of time. Before this happens, according to Daniel Schmatenberger, found of the Critical Path Institute, there are seven steps you can take right now that will provide healing for you and a feeling of completion for them. Read on to learn more about these steps.

1. Make a Time Line of their Life Together

One of the best memory keepsakes that keeps a person’s spirit alive is to make a time line of their lives. Sitting down with a parent and working on this together provides a wonderful bonding experience. Include stories among the timeline that tell of victories, defeats, life lessons, and more. Not sure where to start? Apps are available to help you create a timeline if you’d rather not use pen and paper. If you opt for the later, follow these steps:

• write birth at the far left of the page
• draw a horizontal line to the far right where you write death
• place experiences in chronological order, with positive experiences listed on vertical lines and negative experiences listed on horizontal lines
• write a short description of each experience to give further details, impart wisdom, and give life lessons

2. Heal Your Relationship

There are three areas where you can heal your relationship with a parent: forgiveness, gratitude, and reassurance. If you hold any resentments, forgive them. Also, apologize for ways you have hurt them. Make peace. Next, show your gratitude for everything they have done for you by writing them a letter. Finally, reassure them that leaving you is ok. They don’t need to worry. You will be fine. This is a good time to discuss estate planning and helping them get their affairs in order to give them further peace of mind concerning your future after they are gone.

3. Help Other Family Members with Healing

Whether it be siblings, uncles, aunts, grandchildren or other family Members, help them go through the same process outlined above for healing.

4. Gather Family Wisdom

This is a great opportunity to put together all the wisdom your parent(s) gathered over their long lives. This can be gathered in paper form or recorded on video and is something that can be passed down from generation to generation.

5. Help Them Create a Bucket List

Ask them if there is anything they still want to do. Is there a dream they have yet to fulfill? Help them create a bucket list and then help them achieve it.

6. Help Them See Their Contribution to the World

Besides touching the lives of you and your family, help you parent(s) see how they’ve touched other’s lives in the community and around the world.

7. Help Them Face Passing with a Peaceful Heart

If you parent has a fear of death, this is something you can help them with. In fact, when it is time to die, your parent should be as welcoming to death as a myriad of Emily Dickinson poems. Religion and spirituality can help during this time, as well as favorite songs, stories, and poems. Mediation and other peace building practices, like yoga, can be introduced to bring a sense of oneness with the world in the here and now but also in what awaits us after death.

 

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