💛 My Family Can’t Agree About End-of-Life Decisions (AARP Article)

[Winter2025VA]

FROM THE ARTICLE.

A lack of medical wishes for a parent with dementia is causing an uproar.

By Barry J. Jacobs, AARP. Published December 19, 2025.

Editors asked AARP Family Caregivers Discussion Group members and other caregivers to submit pressing questions they’d like family therapist and clinical psychologist Barry Jacobs to tackle in this column. Jacobs took on this hot-button topic.

Question: As a caregiver for a parent with dementia who did not have a medical directive, how do you discuss end-of-life decisions (for example, a Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment form, or MOLST) with family members with differing opinions? The situation is already very emotional.

USE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE.

https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/medical/jacobs-end-of-life-decisions/

[SereneSeagull]

So necessary!  Another reason why writing down end-of-life wishes now while we are alive and have a healthy mind, is so important, before one gets to the possible time when one can’t make those decisions or express them to family.

.  Very hard for families to grapple with this in addition to dealing with the here-and-now that face them and their loved one in the grips of this.   Specifying wishes is so important and expressing to loved ones now, rather than not writing anything down at all on what that person wanted, Every member of a family could have differing views, and so emotional, without

knowing what that loved one would’ve wanted.  Hard, but so necessary 💜

So to answer the given question asked here, 

If the parent didn’t have any directive or wishes written, I’d hope that members would try and put aside anything they would/would not want and think only what their loved one would.  

Organ donation etc… also involves skin.   A very hard concept to deal with but elderly people evidently make excellent donors for this.  We didn’t know that. So to honor a family members wishes on donation, that became a point  we had to deal with in, in fulfilling that.  We didnt know if our loved one knew that when they decided to donate, but since they were a donor, we grappled and as a result said yes to that.   

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Winter2025VA

Honored Social Butterfly

‎12-19-2025 04:41 PM

💛 My Family Can’t Agree About End-of-Life Decisions (AARP Article)

FROM THE ARTICLE.

A lack of medical wishes for a parent with dementia is causing an uproar.

By Barry J. Jacobs, AARP. Published December 19, 2025.

Editors asked AARP Family Caregivers Discussion Group members and other caregivers to submit pressing questions they’d like family therapist and clinical psychologist Barry Jacobs to tackle in this column. Jacobs took on this hot-button topic.

Question: As a caregiver for a parent with dementia who did not have a medical directive, how do you discuss end-of-life decisions (for example, a Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment form, or MOLST) with family members with differing opinions? The situation is already very emotional.

USE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE.