If you want to be helpful to your loved ones, you should plan for your death and get most everything in order. The top tier items (that I have very limited experience with and do not claim to be an expert on) are your will, any healthcare items, and power of attorney. You can try to do those online, but I really suggest a package deal with an attorney.
The secondary items are a lot easier, but easily forgotten:
funeral planning, what kind of service you want, what to do with your social
media accounts, and your obituary.
And lastly, clean up your stuff. Your last will guides your
surviving relatives as to who gets your stuff, but your stuff is probably messy
and consists of trash. Clean up, give away, donate, sell, or throw away your
stuff before you die so the people you love don’t have to. I have a box of crap
that my friends might find interesting and I have told Sally to dump it out on
a table, let people take what they want, and throw out what they don’t. One of
you will want my T’em-poa thermos and Homestar Runner figurines.
I have previously posted about writing your own obituary That article is a bit cheeky, but I do think you should write, or work with
someone to write, your obituary ahead of time. No one should have a crappy
obituary. If you don’t do any of the planning above, you are guaranteed to have
a shitty, bland obituary as your surviving relatives scurry to get you in the
ground. But as I jokingly described a “kick-ass obituary,” it made me think
about needing to update said self-crafted obituary every couple of years. When
I started to update mine, I realized it was an opportunity. I call it the
five-year obituary.
First thing you need to do is write your obituary. Put all
the things you want people to see after you are gone. Mine is written in the
first person, from me, and I think people will enjoy reading my last words in
my voice. As part of your obituary, think about the things you have
accomplished and where you might have come up short. Be honest. If you read the
adjacent sequel to Orson Scott Card’s “Enders Game,” you’d know that as
“Speaker for the Dead”: someone who researches your life and lays it all out at
the funeral. It’s a bit kinder if you do it yourself.
Once you have an obituary you like, or possibly don’t like,
put it with your will or in a file your survivors can find it. I have mine in a
folder on my desktop called, “Things to Do when Doug Dies.” This should be your
initial kick in the pants if you are unhappy with how your life is shaking out.
Are you happy with this life summarized in a few paragraphs? Are you going to
do anything about it? Well? Get to it!
If you are fortunate to live for five more years, pull that
obituary out and read it. Edit it. Add the stuff you’ve done or add to the list
of things you have failed to do. Are you happy about this new obituary? Reflect
on the old version and the updated one and contemplate if you want to make some
changes in your life to move some of those regrets from Column B into the
successes in Column A. Well? Get to it, again, but better this time!
I am on the third revision of my obituary and it makes me
happy to read it. But there are some modifiers I want to add to some of my
successes, like “best-selling” or “award winning.” Hmmm… looks like I need to
get to it.
Maybe you should, too.
