37: A Time to Decide Part III: Choosing for Others

Pete Behrens:
How do we choose when others cannot?

Welcome to another episode of Relearning Leadership, where we explore a specific leadership challenge and break it down to help improve your leadership, your organization…and, just possibly, your personal life. I’m Pete Behrens, and today, I want to explore that last phrase, personal life.

The end of the year is a great time to reflect on the year, to reunite with family and friends, and to plan the year ahead. But the end of the year, now, has become quite a pretty significant inflection point in my personal life. A year ago, in the span of exactly one week at the end of December, I experienced two very traumatic events. My mother—as she gave up her fight against cancer and entered hospice, the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history destroyed over 1,000 homes and literally came up to our doorstep. I shared these stories on this podcast, in A Time to Decide Part I: The End of Life and Part II: The Marshall Fires. 

This year, exactly one year and one day following my mom’s passing my father passed away. He was 89-and-a-half years old. Yeah, our families are experiencing Groundhog Day in December. In fact, my father’s last family gathering came on the very same day as my mother’s: Christmas Eve. For my mom, pneumonia and her acute cancer hastened her journey and forced her hand. Her body literally gave out while her mind kept on fighting. But my father’s journey was different. In fact, Dad was never quite the same person after 2015.

To know Bill Behrens was a treat. He was born on an Iowa farm and grew up in the post-WWII boom. You know, classic cars, crew cut hair, white t-shirts with the cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves. He developed an incredibly strong work ethic, a deep curiosity to learn, and a mindset that anything could be fixed with enough duct tape or grease. He was also a dedicated husband, father, and grandfather. While I groaned as a child getting pulled out of something fun to help him on a house project or chore, later, as a dad myself, I cherished those moments, watching him engage with our young boys on those very same house projects.

My dad was a preacher and a teacher. Literally. He was ordained in the Lutheran Church as a pastor, however, he spent most of his career teaching other pastors. As I came into my own career, first as an engineer, later as a manager, but mostly as an organizational and leadership coach, I had to look in the mirror. I had become my father—a preacher and a teacher—with just a slightly different focus. I have to say, as I look into that mirror a bit more deeply, I see many parallels. I credit mom and dad for passing down an incredibly strong work ethic, their example of how to be a supportive partner to my spouse and parent to our children, their frugality in fixing first before throwing away and buying new, and their deep curiosity to learn and to travel.

But much of that changed for my father in 2015, when he fell and hit his head hard enough to cause his brain to bleed. While that was scary enough in the moment, what we didn’t understand at the time was that he would never return to that same dad after that point.

There is a time in many of our lives where the parent-child relationship flips. Those listening that have gone through this know what I’m talking about. It’s a time when you need to start deciding for them, because their ability to decide effectively on their own is compromised. For my dad, this started with his car keys. Due to his injury, he was no longer able to see and process quickly enough to drive safely. He mentioned to me one day after we took his car keys away, “I’ve had keys in my pocket for 60 years, and I feel lost without them.” I empathize with his loss, right? That need for autonomy is rooted deep in our brain, and when it’s taken away, it’s treated like a threat. Yet, the loss of autonomy is a constant slope for the elderly. And my dad’s journey was simply sped up after his brain injury.

Around that same time he was losing his car keys, we were encouraging them to move into an independent living center before it was too hard to do so later. Once again, letting go of your own place is an incredibly challenging decision. You’re letting go of more autonomy. Yet, that’s the decision we were pushing them into. My mom, even up to her final days through cancer, thought she would be moving back to her home. And then, after my mother’s passing, we moved Dad into an assisted living center, as mother was not there to care for him. And at that point, we didn’t even give him an option because of his need for assistance, both physically and mentally.

This past year with my dad I see as a gift. Just like the time I was able to spend with my mom in her six-month cancer journey, I got to visit my dad multiple times a week over the past year, and it provided me a deeper connection with. I celebrated each time I visited and he remembered my name and knew me! And while he may not have recalled that he came over to my house even the week prior or remember the former homes he lived in or even the job he held for 40 years, he could draw up incredible detail of growing up on that Iowa farm. Taking him back there was a gift through story.

But over the past year, we’ve also had to increase our decisions for Dad. We had to decide it was time for him to use a walker as he became more and more unstable. We decided to increase his medication when he exhibited behavioral challenges. And finally, after Christmas Eve, we decided it was time to call hospice.

Exactly one year following my mom’s transition to hospice, my father was following her. Or, perhaps, she was calling him. In fact, at our Christmas gathering with the family, we asked Dad what he remembered about Mom. He said, “She’s still talking to me!” We asked him what she says. He said, “Well, she tells me to get up! Get out of bed!” And we all had to chuckle, because Dad had always been the early bird, and it was Mom who liked to sleep in.

Over the next few days, as we entered the new year, Dad became bedridden, his speaking turned to muttering, and he finally slipped into unconsciousness. During that time, all of his children and grandchildren were able to gather with him at each stage and share their love and to say goodbye. After he passed away, at 11:08pm on January 2nd, I reflected on his final week following our Christmas Eve gathering. It was as if Dad turned off a switch after our dinner. I can see now that Dad made that final decision—the decision to end his life. We were just there to help him execute it.

I say “we” because I could have done this without the support of my sister, my brother and our families, and from the support of Dad’s assisted living center and the hospice nurses. Leadership in Dad’s journey was a true collaboration, with my sister taking the lead. And, possibly—if there is a leadership story here, it’s that leadership is improved through that collaboration. Making such challenging life decisions is incredibly hard and taxing. Having others to share that burden not only lessens our own burden, but it more deeply engages others on that journey.

And while I hope you found some value from this episode, my true intent in sharing this story is just a bit more selfish. I find the process of writing and speaking to be therapeutic. It helps me process. And I recognize the uniqueness in every end-of-life story. And I just feel blessed to have had dedicated time on my dad’s journey, both in that final year together while he could share with me in some way, and in his final week passage.

Thank you, Dad, for being such an excellent role model for me. For caring for me. For mentoring me. For even disciplining me. And for your curiosity in my own journey, thank you, Dad.

Relearning Leadership is the official podcast of the Agile Leadership Journey. Together we build better leaders. It’s hosted by me, Pete Behrens, with contributions from our global Guide community. It’s produced by Ryan Dugan. With music by Joy Zimmerman. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review, or share a comment. And visit our website, agileleadershipjourney.com/podcast, for guest profiles, episode references, transcripts, and to explore more about your own leadership journey.