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Happening ... in the Local Church
 From
left are Robert McCreary, Father Paul Graf, Matt Drury, Pamelia
Storms-Barrett, Tom Parent and Bill Gettings. (Photo by Caroline B.
Mooney) |
By Caroline B. Mooney
The
Catholic Moment
LAFAYETTE — One of the greatest gifts to family is planning ahead for all aspects of one’s death … and the best place to start is with simple dialogue.
This was the message delivered by Robert L. McCreary, director of the diocesan Pastoral Office for Stewardship and Development, at a panel discussion on what is left behind for children and relatives to deal with after a death. The recent meeting at St. Lawrence Church was the first of six that will be offered in each of the diocesan deaneries.
Panel members included: Matt Drury, funeral director; Tom Parent, attorney; Father Paul Graf, chaplain at St. Elizabeth Central and Home hospitals; Bill Gettings, financial planner, and Pamelia Storms-Barrett, director of development at St. Theodore Guerin High School, Noblesville.
“The idea for this started from a Cursillo prayer chain request,” McCreary said. “A wife was concerned about her husband and his family — a stepsister had died with no will or directives. Relatives were at war with each other, and it caused a lot of stress and anger.”
“You don’t need to have a will to die, and a lot could happen without a will,” Parent said. “People tell folks what they want to happen with their estate, but what people hear and what is written are often different. A joint bank account trumps a will and the co-signer will get the account. The same is true with life insurance and 401k’s.
“If it isn’t in a will, it’s not legally binding,” he said. He suggested writing a letter that specifies wishes such as where personal effects go and denoting that letter in a will. Changes can then be made to the letter without rewriting the will.
Parent said that a general power of attorney grants someone authority over another person’s health care when the person can’t make his own decisions.
The Health Information Privacy Rule (HIPPA) protects an individual’s health information.
“If you want someone to have access to your medical records, you need to sign a HIPPA form,” he said. “It can be important for someone who has your power of attorney when they are dealing with insurance.”
Gettings spoke about a woman who ran benefits for 90 people who died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. She found that 40 percent of the beneficiaries of the deceased were out-of-date.
“The number one thing she learned was that too many people don’t have current beneficiaries,” he said. “Huge sums of money went where the deceased didn’t want it to. Contacting beneficiaries can also be a problem — information needs to be updated. It gets down to simple things being problems; like people knowing where your important documents are.”
“Family situations intrigue me,” Father Graf said. “Families are a blessing, but they need to keep dialogue going. Getting together can be hard with different personalities and sometimes a counselor may be needed to give insight, but communication is essential.”
He said the Church highly recommends organ donation.
“When one is dying, you can give life to another,” he said. “As for cremation, the Church gives it an okay, but you need to think of the dignity of the body. The Church encourages burial of the ashes — it is not recommended that ‘cremains’ are thrown out to sea — they should be treated with dignity and respect.”
Drury recommended making pre-arrangements.
“To simply write your own obituary is extremely helpful,” he said. “Things happen to you that only you know about. Once you complete it, put it where it can be found. An obituary tells who you are. I encourage people to do that, as well as recording wishes for a Mass of Christian Burial. When you sit down to make funeral arrangements, biographical data takes up most of the time. To try to do that after a death, when people are upset, is hard. You relieve your family of a great burden with pre-arrangements.”
People often don’t want flowers sent to a funeral, Barrett said. “At a recent meeting with a group of newly ordained priests, the suggestion was to let others know of any of your favorite charities or schools. Then, people can make gifts in your name upon your death. Your legacy carries on and you’re doing something special. It can be the food pantry, your parish — anything, but then your family doesn’t have to make that decision.”
“The important thing to reinforce is conversation,” McCreary said. “Unless you share what your desires are, what are the odds that your desires will be carried out? What is the possibility that people under tremendous stress after your death will make those decisions for you? Unless you properly plan, you can be a burden after death.
“A lot of things happen that are very difficult for us to control,” he said. “One of the greatest gifts is family, and planning ahead makes things so much easier for them. Stewardship is taking care of your family when you are gone.
“No matter what our age or situation is, every day is a gift,” McCreary said. “A Catholic Foundation of Northcentral Indiana endorsement costs nothing. You can direct a gift any way you want. Please remember the Church in your will. The concept is not giving away, but giving back. All we have is a gift from God, and we can leave a legacy that returns God’s gifts.”
Jan Scarcelli, a parishioner of Blessed Sacrament Parish, West Lafayette, said she and her husband, Ralph, attended the discussion because “we are trying to make things easier for our families. We are thinking about and preparing for these things. I thought the discussion was well done and I got some great general information.”
“I want to get my affairs in order and I can always learn something,” said Naomi CasaSanta, a member of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception. “I thought this evening was informative in many ways.”
Other topics covered included living wills, funeral home and nursing home charges, and dealing with Medicaid and Medicare. For more information, contact McCreary at rmcreary@dol-in.org.