Preparing for a "good death"

We hire organizers and planners for so many things in life – wedding planners, travel agents for big milestone trips, event planners, even birth doulas. So why aren’t we hiring people to help us plan for the end of life? And I mean, in ADVANCE of facing the end of life? Death is something we will all face and yet, we are collectively NOT planning for this phase of life. Yes, there are hospice nurses and hospice services available, but they're usually not engaged until someone has a terminal diagnosis and has less than 6 months to live. And yes, there are death doulas as well, who often do a lot of what hospice does, just minus the medical aspects. But again, families and friends often don’t engage with these types of resources until faced with a terminal illness.

What if we started planning for the end of life while we’re still healthy, while we still have our faculties about us, so we can make lucid and good decisions about how we want our lives to end? Not just who gets our finances and assets or what we want done with our bodies, but what kind of music do we want to be listening to, what kind of clothes will we wear, who do we want surrounding us? Now, this is assuming we will have the gift of time before we die. Many deaths are sudden and often times people are robbed of the time to incorporate these things into the last moments of life. That is not lost on me, as someone who knows sudden death firsthand. BUT if we’re lucky enough to have the gift of time in the end, why don’t we use the time we have NOW to plan for a “good death” for ourselves?

I believe part of planning for a “good death” is understanding and being prepared for the mountain of logistical and administrative tasks that pile up after someone dies. This was maybe one of the biggest shocks to me after my dad died. The ever-mounting list of things to do was nothing short of horrific. Just the grief alone was so heavy to carry, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to do actual logistical things. I couldn’t fathom how we as a family were to complete these monumental and never ending administrative tasks when all we wanted to do was to be able to grieve. Grieving just by itself is a full time job. So if we have our “ducks in a row” for ourselves in advance and have documented what we want in our own deaths, or understand what someone else may want in their death, it takes some of the weight of the guessing game off the grievers shoulders. There is more clear direction and less decisions have to be made when you’re in the heavy fog of grief. I could barely form a coherent sentence in the early days of grief much less make any decisions about dealing with ashes, trying to write an obituary and God knows what else. My dad had an updated will in place, a passwords document and other documents that helped make the pain of his loss easier for us in the end. So I encourage you to also think about these things to make it easier on your loved ones whenever your time comes.

Often the term for administrative tasks after a death occurs is called “deadmin.” It is enough of a phenomenon and the amount of logistics is so monumental that yes, it has its own term. I believe we should be able to offload these administrative tasks to someone else, likely someone not too close to the family, a neutral and/or objective resource to help with mounting administrative tasks. When you’re close to the dying (or dead) loved one, it can be like ripping the bandaid off of a fresh wound every single time you have to make another phone call to close an account, search email to try to uncover passwords, etc. and it is horrific. So having someone else handle these awful tasks helps shoulder the burden.

So I'll be developing a cheat sheet to get you started on what types of tasks you may have to deal with at the end of life or after a death. Then I'm thinking about offering concierge services to people in case they want to hire me directly to help handle some of these items and take them off the proverbial plate. Would this be something you're interested in?