The Guadalajara Reporter

Knocking on heaven’s gate in Mexico: Time comes when ‘future’ means practical values that leave behind a coherent echo

The New Year’s first days – and weeks – traditionally pique the challenging urge to create a list of well-intentioned resolutions. For many people this is a briefly uplifting but ultimately doomed effort. It seems natural for humans to pine for ambitious, scribbled columns of what turn out to be miracles.

Example: Every day I begin with a “To-Do List” of 12 to 15 tasks; of these, I usually accomplish between eight and ten.  I am lucky to now be wise enough to put the most important tasks first – still, an average of eight out of 15 is pretty shabby.

But some recent events – and memories they have stirred – prompted a new species of discipline and resolution.

My wife and I have lived on the north shore of Lake Chapala for four decades, engaging in a number of enterprises, including journalism, newspaper publishing and real estate. And this unfortunately provided an over abundance of instructive lessons concerning the daunting challenge of dying in Mexico with an unperturbed soul concerning the outside chance of leaving one’s personal affairs behind in anything resembling an orderly state.

Consider coolly the following list of practical requirements. That they are shorn even a glance of dealing with grief and grieving; with remembrance of good and tough times; with things we wish we had said if only we had known, should alert you to the fact that they deal with legal matters and practical steps that may protect your heirs from error while trying to preserve your last wishes.

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