I just won an argument with my father. It took 45 years, but I finally did it. It also took 2 days of strategizing over sleepless nights, drafting a letter 5 times, and then using the letter as a cheat sheet while I called him in person to discuss the matter before I chickened out. Even then, it wasn't my eloquent words or flawless logic, but it was my irrational tears that finally won him over.

My mother had painted many beautiful works of art, starting when she turned 60 and took lessons at the local Community College. Her family was enthralled; we had no idea she had such talent lurking inside, waiting for the time that retirement gives one to burst forth. She was very prolific for about ten years, before her mind began to slip and it became frustrating for her to stare at a canvas and not be able to remember how to create. We were all very proud of her art work, as was she, and she gave away many paintings to her children and other relatives and friends. There were still many paintings that had not been promised, and she asked my sisters and me to write names on the backs of photographs of the paintings to ensure that they eventually would belong to someone who would appreciate them. She was very particular about who would NOT get her paintings, and one place she was particularly negative about was the local Chanute Art Gallery. She told me more than once, and my son as well, that she disliked the attitude of the people whose artwork was displayed in this facility, and that she would not want her art displayed there for many reasons.

So imagine my dismay when my father called me one evening to tell me that he had just been to dinner with Shirley and Frank Smith. Shirley was the Art Gallery's owner and manager. At first I was grateful, "Isn't that nice that they wanted to take you to dinner," I said, thinking they were being kind to the new widower. "Yes," he said. "Shirley wanted to talk to me about putting some of your mother's paintings in her Gallery." I was silent, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "So I let her pick some out to take with her," he finished as my heart sank.

"Well, loaning them some of Mother's paintings is a nice gesture, Daddy, but they're just loans, right?" I said, hopefully. "No," he crushed my hopes with one fell swoop. "I told her she could keep them." "Forever?" I said sadly. "Yes, why not?" he said defensively.

Then I asked which paintings she had chosen, and my heart fell further. With the eye of an art dealer, Shirley had chosen the two most beautiful creations my mother had ever completed: the only still life she'd ever done, of lemons and eggs that made you almost smell the citrus, and the original painting of Mother's childhood home in Manhattan, Kansas. An heirloom. Given away. Although he had called to ostensibly ask my permission, I soon realized that he didn't intend to change his mind and had really called just to inform me that he had done it. I tried to tell him about the photographs, but he stated my mother had never told him about the names written on the backs. So I dropped it for the time being. It seemed a done deal. In fact, those were his words when I tried to argue, "It's a done deal." I was willing to live with it.

A few days passed before I started thinking about what this event really meant to my family and my mother's legacy. Another thing my mother hated very much was the idea that, in her generation, when a woman married she gave up ownership of her own life and her own possessions. She talked to me often of how she detested the feeling and the reality that a woman went where her husband said, lived where he lived, and if that meant leaving your own family behind, so be it. After consulting with my sisters, I wrote down my arguments and called him from work to beg him to reconsider. As I said, I broke down in tears when he refused to capitulate, and so I hung up after saying a few things I would probably have regretted later. I was still emotional when he called me a few hours later; I was at work and asked a colleague to please take a message. A few minutes later my colleague came in to the copy room where I was furiously collating amidst tears of frustration. "He says to stop crying, he got the paintings back." It was a shallow victory. He let Shirley pick out two other paintings that she still got to keep. Forever.

There's so much STUFF left when people die. If you haven't experienced that yet, perhaps I can do you a service by giving you this one piece of advice. Make it two:

1. Write down a list of what you want to go to whom when you die. If it means anything to you at all, you have to write it down or it never happened! I was surprised to learn that a Will does not really speak to specific small items, but a list attached to the Will is generally accepted and adhered to.

•  Start getting rid of your extraneous stuff NOW so your kids don't have to deal with it.

My husband and I lost our mothers within 30 days of one another. Within 6 weeks, we had a total accumulation of 8 boxes of memorabilia/heirlooms/junk. We don't even know what's in some of them yet. I refuse to open them until I've cleaned out my own junk/storage closets so there's room for more stuff.

Another piece of paper that everyone needs to have, well several pieces actually, are the Living Will, and the Powers of Attorney for Health Care and Finances. Without these pieces of paper, with your wishes written correctly and witnessed and drawn up by an experienced attorney, you could find yourself on artificial life support for years. Or, if you WANT to be on artificial life support, your closest relative can make the opposite decision. It's up to you. Do you want to be at the mercy of your spouse's thinking, your children's thinking, your physician's personal belief system? Or do you want to take control NOW and take the steps necessary to protect yourself and your children from the kind of conflict that my father and I had to survive.

Well, we did survive. We're speaking again. He calls me "crybaby" every time we talk now. So, let's tally this up again. Forty-five years of living experience and knowing my father, 2 sleepless nights, 1 letter, 1 phone call, and hysterical crying and yelling. Yeah. I've got him wrapped around my little finger, don't I?

Debra Sorensen, MSW, LISW, CMC, is a professional care manager and owner of Debra J. Sorensen & Associates Inc., a private geriatric care management company serving Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. She can be reached at 419-367-8835 or e-mail Debra@professionalcareforyou.com.