NEXT AVENUE SPECIAL SECTION
Are You Prepared for Death? By Amy Carlson Gustafson
It's been nearly five years since Pat Miles' husband, Charles "Bucky" Zimmerman, died at age 72 after a short bout with pancreatic cancer. He was healthy, she says, so his illness came as a shock. Another unwelcome surprise? What happened after his death. Instead of being able to grieve fully, Miles was consumed by attorney battles, tracking down account numbers and sorting through investments. She says it was a "nightmarish" scenario where the people she thought were on her side weren't interested in her well-being. The retired, award-winning Twin Cities TV anchor and radio host, who now lives in Arizona, was truly lost when it came to navigating her husband's death and consumed by what she calls “the grim fog of grief.” “Bucky and I had a will and a trust – I thought everything was taken care of," Miles, 73, says. "As it turned out, nothing was taken care of. If you wait until someone's sick and dying, you've waited too long because you're not going to get the information you need at that point. You're thinking about keeping this person alive for another day or getting them to drink a bottle of water. You're not thinking about the account numbers, the investments, the other things you don't know about." "If you wait until someone's sick and dying, you've waited too long because you're not going to get the information you need at that point."
Determined to help people avoid her mistakes, Miles wrote “Before All Is Said and Done: Practical Advice for Living and Dying Well” featuring the voices of fellow widows along with financial, legal and medical experts. "The people who have read the book tell me they are taking action," Miles says. "They're thanking me for writing and speaking about this. That's very gratifying." Miles listened to hundreds of people tell their stories during her journalism career. But the experiences people tell her about now hit differently than during her time as a broadcaster. "When I sign books after a speaking engagement, everybody has a story to tell me, and I'd say 90% of these are not good stories," says Miles. "As a culture, we don't want to deal with death. I tell people I used to be like you. I never would have come to listen to me talk about this book."
Read more of this story on NextAvenue.org
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