It is the holidays. The beautiful Ode to Joy (the 4th movement of Beethoven’s Symphony №9) is playing from an old Christmas CD. To learn more about Beethoven (1770–1827) and Ode to Joy, see Maria Popova’s beautiful tribute in her newsletter (themarginalian.org) here. To experience the beauty of Ode to Joy, listen here.
Beethoven’s story is fascinating. The poem Ode to Joy was written by poet Friedrich Schiller, and Beethoven became captivated by it as a teenager. Maria Popova describes the poem as an ode to freedom:
“a blazing manifesto for the Enlightenment ethos that if freedom, justice, and human happiness are placed at the center of life and made its primary devotion, politically and personally, then peace and kindness would envelop humankind as an inevitable consequence.”
Beethoven wanted to include the poem in one of his compositions, but it took him roughly 38 years to accomplish his goal. Ode to Joy was the chorale finale of his Symphony №9, which was first performed in Vienna on May 7, 1824. A symphony had never included words or lyrics before.
Ode to Joy has been featured in numerous world events, including Chinese students playing it during the protests in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989, in a Christmas Day concert following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and by the National Symphony Orchestra in Ukraine, shortly before Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.
______________________________________________________________
I’m thoroughly enjoying the beauty of Ode to Joy, but I’m also reminiscing about my late friend, Jo. Jo was Josephine. I had the honor of having her and her husband as clients in my financial planning firm from 2002 until I retired in late 2021. They had a happy marriage, and they were both funny and intriguing. Jo was a risk-taker, while her husband was far more conservative. They jokingly told me they decided they needed a financial advisor because they would soon be broke if Jo continued to manage their money. She had invested in several stocks that had lost money.
They quickly became two of my favorite clients. I helped them consolidate their scattered investment accounts, move $250,000 of EE savings bonds from their safe deposit box to Treasury Direct, and unravel the cost basis of several DRIPs (individual stocks with dividend reinvestment) Jo had bought. They were aging, and clearly slowing down. I nudged them to visit the best retirement community in our city, a “continuing care facility” that provided all levels of care. They could afford the buy-in price, and it would have provided the care and social stimulation they needed. Jo told me later that her husband was not ready to consider it.
Loss
In early 2013 Jo’s husband developed leukemia, and he died a few months later. At the time, Jo had a broken collar bone from a fall in their home, and was confined to the upstairs master bedroom of their home. She was thinking clearly, but her mobility was limited. A grandson moved into their home with his wife to help care for Jo, but his wife was uncooperative, creating a toxic atmosphere. The arrangement did not last long. Jo tried to piece together in-home care-givers for a few months, and then realized she needed to move to a facility.
She could have chosen the continuing care facility at that time, but she chose a nursing home instead. She had a lovely one-bedroom apartment (in independent living) with a huge living room, a kitchen, and a small bedroom and bathroom. She never used the living room or the kitchen, but it felt like home to her, and she seemed happy. She gave her car away, and never left the facility again. I talked with her every few weeks, and I went to the nursing home several times each year to visit and have financial planning meetings with her.
Jo and her husband had three sons and two grandsons. One of the three sons lived nearby. The other two lived in neighboring states. I always wondered why the two sons did not visit. When Jo’s husband was sick, they did not visit. After he died, they did not visit. They had not visited since sometime before I met Jo and her husband in 2002. I occasionally asked why, but I didn’t want to intrude, and it was clear that the family dynamics with the sons was not healthy.
After her husband died, I expected her sons to rally around Jo. Sadly, it didn’t happen.
Jo and her husband had a revocable living trust, and when he died, their assets were to be divided equally into an A and a B trust. The A trust would be controlled by Jo, and the B trust would be earmarked for the three sons after Jo died. Although Jo could use the income from Trust B if needed, it had constraints. Jo was strong-willed, and she did not want to put assets into the B trust. She wanted to keep control of all of her assets. Her estate attorney told her this would be possible if her three sons would sign a document stating they approved of this arrangement. One of the sons refused to sign the document, presumably because he knew Jo would then have the authority to not leave the assets to the three sons. He is a CPA, and he knew the rules for A and B trusts.
After many months — and after the attorney talked with the son who refused to sign — he signed the document in 2014. Jo had won the battle, but there was clearly a deep rift in the family.
By 2017 Jo was deteriorating physically, but she was still mobile. She was able to walk to the bathroom and to the dining room of the nursing home. After a few falls — and due to her history of compression fractures in her spine — her doctor recommended she move to a facility that could provide more care. Jo refused, but agreed to hire round-the-clock (24 hour) caregivers to prevent her from falling. Although her nursing home was not designed for this, Jo wanted to stay in her independent apartment, and she could afford the $20,000+ monthly fee for the caregivers. The caregivers sat in her living room and played games on their phone or tablets. When needed, they gave Jo her meals (which arrived from the dining room) and helped her with other tasks.
I continued to serve as Jo’s financial planner until I retired in late 2021. At that time, she chose another local planner, and he did a good job for her. By the time I retired I had known Jo almost 20 years, and we had become friends. I continued to visit her.
When I visited, I occasionally asked Jo if she had heard from her two sons who did not live nearby. I wondered what had caused the consternation in the family. Knowing that Jo could be blunt and controlling, I suspect it was something as simple as her pushing her sons away at some point (perhaps in their early 20s) to convince them to become independent. All three sons have college degrees, and Jo and her husband paid for their education. If she made forceful comments to them, I suspect they took her words literally, and never recognized how cruel their actions (and lack of caring) were in her later years.
Learning to Accept
Jo shared with me that her two sons’ indifference was painful to her, but she was hesitant to talk about it. In early 2023 she told me that she grew to accept the situation. She realized she was losing control over many things in her life (she had lost her husband, her home, her mobility, her freedom to socialize with others at the nursing home, the ability to go to the dining hall, and even the ability to get out of bed to go to the bathroom). The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the isolation.
The son who lived locally become her Power of Attorney and paid her bills the last few years. He also brought supplies to the nursing home for her. Although he would not be described as “loving”, he visited her occasionally and she appreciated his help.
I hated going to the nursing home, but I loved visiting Jo. The nursing home was in a bad part of town, with far too much homelessness and crime nearby. It was a depressing, traditional nursing home. It took over 30 minutes for me to drive there, and I dreaded the drive each time. Yet, I loved visiting Jo. Until the last few months, she was spry, spunky, and cheerful. She was incredibly kind, and full of stories.
During the spring of 2023 I noticed her health was declining. She had been bed-bound for four years, and the quality of the caregiving she received was disappointing. She complained about the food and started losing weight. During a visit in July, I discovered she could no longer hear. I always took a notebook with me, and I asked her if she would like to tell me about her childhood and about her life with her husband. I told her if she wanted to talk about her life, I would take notes, and I would share them with her three sons and her two grandsons. Although this felt eerily similar to “Tuesdays with Morrie”, she eagerly agreed, and she started talking. We settled into a routine where I would write down a question, and she would read the question and answer it. I took copious notes, and we continued during the next four visits. Although she could not hear well, she could talk very well!
A Good Life
I learned that her parents were from Italy, and she was born in Connecticut in 1926. She was the oldest of five children. She told me about her childhood, and she emphatically said “I had a good childhood.” At age 11 she spent two months in the hospital with osteomyelitis. She told me about her two years attending college at the University of Connecticut, and dropping out to move to Taxco, Mexico. She was a free spirit, and later moved to New York City and Sarasota, Florida. She returned to college at the University of Texas at Austin, and earned a BA in Zoology. She met her husband at a spelunking club meeting in Austin, and they married when she was age 27. This is the “CliffsNote” version. Her stories were far more colorful!
Unfortunately, in late September — as we reached the point in her life where her sons were born — her memory began to fail. When I visited her in October, I was stunned at how much she had declined. She was no longer able to talk easily. During the last three visits she told me incredibly kind things about the importance of our friendship and how much she appreciated my visits. On our last visit, she thanked me for visiting her on the “last few days” of her life. We shared some tears together, and she died on November 7, 2023.
When someone dies at age 97, I cannot say she died too soon. If it had been me, I would have wanted to die several years earlier, when she began losing her independence and freedom. However, she taught me many things, and I am grateful. She taught me the importance of acceptance, and “letting go” of the sadness caused by family members who seemed unable to show her love. She taught me to “lighten up” as I age. She repeatedly told me to “play more” and enjoy my family. She was ecstatic when I told her my husband and I will soon become grandparents for the first time, and she never failed to ask about my husband and my two daughters during my visits. She was gradually learning how to show emotions, and in September she talked about her husband, who had died ten years earlier. She said to me “I am missing him on a gut level more than ever before”. She teared up and was more emotional than I had ever seen her.
I’ll eventually compile my notes and give them to her sons and grandsons. They are unaware of our conversations, and they don’t know what a joy Jo was to me and her other friends. I’ll pepper my write-up with some of the funny stories she shared with me over the years.
I think of her often when I lay in bed at night. I am grateful to have known her. Ode to Jo.
Takeaways
- Be kind. Others appreciate it, and it will also make you feel good.
- Learn to accept. Jo learned to accept enormous loss over the past ten years.
- Always look on the bright side of life. This is a Monty Python song, but it has great lyrics. Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl said “The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” We have the ability to choose to have a positive attitude.
- Attempt to repair rifts with family members. Swallow your pride, and reach out.
- Rejoice in the wisdom of others, and learn from them.
Thanks for reading! To receive my monthly newsletter (including instructions for creating a Master Finance and Estate Planning binder for your loved ones, called “Organized and Ready” please sign up here.
Go to my website www.donnaskeelscygan.com, and read past articles here.
Donna Skeels Cygan, CFP®, MBA, is the author of The Joy of Financial Security. She owned a fee-only financial planning firm for over 20 years and is now writing a new book that will be published in 2025.