Being of Sound Mind and Body

It has been a week since the sudden, shocking death of Anna Nicole Smith (may she rest in peace). Surprisingly, I am still rattled by the whole thing, but I think that is because of all the hoopla that has continued since her passing. It has given me pause.

I have thought about creating a Living Will on and off throughout my lifetime, but I never got around to making one. However, after seeing all the back-and-forth fighting that is going on over Anna’s remains, and the legal talk about custody and parental rights, I have realized something: these fights go on all the time; we just don’t know or hear about them, since most of us are not in the public spotlight.

I really feel for Howard K. Stern. It is obvious to me that Anna was not close to her blood-family; her “real” family had nothing to do with blood-ties. This poor man has been through a lot with Anna, and now, in his deepest time of grief, he is being hounded and threatened by those who are trying to lay claim to what is his – what is rightfully his by heart ownership, but not necessarily legal ownership.

The law does not care about matters of the heart.

I have lived a good life so far, and I intend on living a good life for many decades to come. However, after seeing what Howard K. Stern is going through, I have come to realize that I cannot leave my wishes of a long life up to chance. In other words, should something terrible befall me, I wish that I already had a plan in place so that my grieving husband can grieve in peace. No one deserves to go through what Mr. Stern is going through, and if there’s anything I can do to prevent that from happening to those I love, then I am going to do it.

I started filling out a Living Will I found on an Internet site and almost instantly started feeling queasy. I had to answer questions regarding if I were in a terminal state, do I wish to have artificially administered food and water, and comfort care? Then I had to answer similar questions for the conditions of permanent coma and vegetative state. Let me tell you, this is not an exercise for the faint of heart! Being of sound mind and body, considering my death (which suddenly seemed palpable and inescapable) is very, very tough to do! And if that were not enough, I had to answer how I would like to proceed were it discovered I was pregnant when an above scenario befell me: do I wish to keep to the plan, or allow treatment until the pregnancy was fulfilled?

I eventually finished the Living Will, but there were some things that were not covered, and I wasn’t convinced that this Living Will was as complete as it could or should be. I don’t want any loopholes, you see. Plus, I had to pay for it, which I didn’t feel like doing, and then I would have had to have it notarized. That’s kind of a lot of work. Maybe I need to absorb more of the shock of realizing that as scary, scary, scary as it is; I need to have a Living Will. Or maybe these are all excuses because I am a chicken-butt.

But I have to get over my chicken-buttness, because the law does not care about matters of the heart.

It is a weird collision of worlds, when heart meets law. The law, by nature, has no heart. It cannot, or else it may succumb to being partial, and no amount of begging and pleading by the heart will persuade the law to see things differently. We have been given tools by the law so that our hearts can express themselves in a way the law can understand. However, those tools mean nothing if we do not use them. I guess I just have to figure out a way to shut my heart up until I can complete the Living Will.