Be kind to your kids. They’re the ones who someday choose your rest home.

That used to be funny — until my husband and I spent a couple of (pricey) hours with an attorney last week deciding which of our children will do just that — choose our rest home, along with a whole load of other decisions about our futures. Then it wasn’t funny anymore. In fact, it’s sobering to view your children as the adults who will someday manage your end-of-life experiences when and if you can no longer take care of yourself.

Those tasks include things like taking over your financial responsibilities, keeping track of your health, deciding when you can no longer safely live alone, and determining when you’re no longer competent to make your own choices. Your kids are, in fact, the ones who decide when the parameters of your self-created definition of what “competent” means are no longer being met. Then they take over your life. Because you’ve asked them to become your parents.

This is a soul-searching process, one I’m not shy to speak about because it needs to get the attention of folks who think they’re years away from making these kinds of decisions. Then one day you wake up and it’s time. In fact, probably past time. Like it was for us. We’d put this off, thinking those kinds of choices were for people who’ve retired and are empty-nesters and living on Social Security and investments and, hey, wait a minute …

So yeah, find the attorney, pay the money and map out the rest of your life. No big deal, except it really is. Especially when you’re deciding which of your children are going to take over whatever kind of kingdom you’ve built. If you choose wisely, they’ll make a go of it. If you don’t, they’ll make a mess of it. We’ve all heard stories from both sides.

So under our attorney’s direction, we studied our kids and filled in the blanks, deciding who should do what: who should have power of attorney, meaning who makes decisions for us while we’re still alive but no longer competent. Who should oversee the health care of two people who statistically will have failing health. Who should decide when to “pull the plug,” as our attorney put it, meaning turn off life support if that time comes. And then, who should be executors of the will, meaning managing the distribution of our assets once we’re gone.

Regarding that process, our attorney recommended that any possessions we want to give to a specific child should be given to him or her now if possible. Or at least make a list of those things and give a copy of the list to each child. He wisely advised, “If someone’s unhappy about any of your distribution choices, let them be unhappy with you — not their sibling. You’ll be gone, but they have to live with their sibling for years to come.” Kind of blunt, but an insightful, peace-keeping strategy.

A couple of useful things we figured out: Assign power of attorney to the kid who sees your big picture the best. Assign executor to the kids who follow instructions best. Don’t choose your indecisive kid to pull the plug; choose the compassionate one for that. Above all, be really specific about what you expect. The more definition you give them, the less confusion they’ll have as they attempt to help you finish out your life, hopefully in a peaceful way, rather than the explosive situations we sometimes see when the change of command becomes a battleground.

Of course, we talked with all our kids about the roles we wanted to assign to them. They ribbed each other a bit, asked questions and accepted. I couldn’t help but notice the startled sadness in some of their eyes. Like us, they probably thought they were years away from discussing their parents’ inevitable mortality.

We’re not gone yet. If nothing else, this discussion renewed the desire to make the most of the time we still have left with them. I believe we’re in for some good times yet.

Meanwhile, we’re OK. We’re in good hands.

D. Louise Brown lives in Layton. She writes a biweekly column for the Standard-Examiner.

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