They Were There When We Needed Them

Yesterday morning I walked into the conference room to meet with Karen in our office.  On the table was a box of tissue left there from a meeting the day before.

It reminded me of something I read recently about the value of ongoing financial planning where a client was reported to have said --"They were there when we needed them."  The family meeting where the tissues were needed was such a case.

Two assertive and caring sons, a caregiver mom, and a sweet victim of Alzeimers father, came in to talk about what to do next given the recent "incident."  There was a good conversation going about HOW to deal with the situation but something seemed out of sorts.  It seems everyone was so involved in the solutions that mom had never really been able to express her true feelings.

After she had a chance to get "it" off her chest and demonstrate the sadness, fear and anger - she said she was feeling it all came together.  After summarizing a few items based upon a long-term understanding of their financial circumstances, one of the sons said to me --"Thanks for your compassion and just being there for the conversation today."  Well, that is about as good a compliment as I can get and is a standard to which we aspire. 

Many relationships are based only upon money.  Many jobs or businesses are based only upon money.  Money can buy service, but it can't buy CARE. How can we expand the value of relationships to more than just money?