Identify and explain the meaning of “living will” and “durable power of attorney.” (CLO 3) Explain death rituals and their significance.

DISCUSSION #1 Introduction: Each week students are asked to go on a virtual tour of an important local, state, or federal agency that provides support, service or advocacy for aging adults. This website that students are to visit, will be provided, and will change from week to week. This is an important component to this survey course, as it will provides an overview of important information associated with aging. ULOs reflected in discussion: Express the meanings of death and factors that affect death anxiety. (CLO 1) Identify and explain the meaning of “living will” and “durable power of attorney.” (CLO 3) Explain death rituals and their significance.

(CLO 3) Directions: You are asked to take a virtual tour of the website provided. After your tour, you are asked to reflect upon the information that is provided in the context of the chapter covered in class during this unit. When you reflect upon this information, you are asked to use APA style and to specifically cite information from the text. You are also asked to respond to at least one peers post. This thoughtful response needs to be more detailed and specific.

Responses like “Nice post” or “Good job” are unacceptable and thus not worth any credit. This week you are asked to revisit your virtual tour of National Institute on Aging. This time, you are consider advance care directives broadly, and getting your affairs in order specifically. This includes planning preparing a living will and writing your obituary from the prospective of having lived to be 100. This link leads you to a website to download a ‘living will’ template by state: https://www.doyourownwill.com/living-will/states.html Here is the link: VIRTUAL TOUR: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/getting-your-affairs-order TASK: Write your living will.

DISCUSSION #2: Applying classroom material in the context of real world scenarios: The case of Benigno Bulosan. Introduction: Each week students are asked to explore a real world scenario. This scenario will ask students to consider material covered during that unit in the context of the scenario. ULOs reflected in discussion: Express the meanings of death and factors that affect death anxiety.

(CLO 1) Explain death rituals and their significance. (CLO 3) Directions: Death: The case of Benigno Bulosan from Fried and Mehrotra (1998): Read the following scenario and post your first response in the discussion, then respond to one or more post: “Benigno Bulosan is dead.

Having suffered from emphysema for the last ten years, he died in his sleep at the age of 86. Benigno and his wife, Patria, did not discuss burial plans. Patria asks her oldest son, Ferdinand, to make the necessary arrangements with the cemetery. Ferdinand knows that his father would want to be grieved and buried as his father before him was in the Philippines.

A big feast is planned. Patria serves as treasurer, collecting money from relatives so that there will be sufficient funds for the embalming, burial, and food. One of Bulosan daughters is responsible for going to the store to select the food, and a cousin is assigned to be in charge of the cooking. Benigno’s body is to stay in the home for three days. The bottom half of the coffin is wood, with the upper half having a glass cover.

As relatives and friends view the body, they refrain from crying. Visitors bring flowers and light candles. A picture of Benigno has been placed on top of his coffin. Nobody touches the body. During the three days in which the body is at home, the family is to do no cleaning, and they do not leave the room to say goodbye to guests.

older friends and relatives strongly discourage pregnant women from participating in the three-day visitation or the funeral so as not to bring harm to their babies or complicate their deliveries. On the day of the funeral, the parish priest offers a Mass at the home.

Family and friends accompany Benigno’s coffin to the church, where another Mass is given. Many participants cry at the loss of Benigno, but the older relatives take care not to allow any of their tears to get on the coffin’s glass cover, for that would impede Benigno’s entry into heaven” (p. 187). Fried, S. B. & Mehrotra, C. M. (1998). Aging and diversity: An active learning experience. Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Francis. CONSIDER: As you reflect upon the funeral of Benigno Bulosan, consider the importance of farewells and the fie stages of grief as you write your reflection.