This hit me like a ton of bricks.
Growing old is a blessing.
End of life planning
To go along with “I’m dead – now what?” I wanted to share this link from the Order of the Good Death.
End of Life Planning
You should have an Advanced Directive so that your family and friends know what your wishes are with regards to your care in case you become incapacitated.
I’m dead! Now what?
Having promised a few folks a blog post about this resource, I wanted to share this downloadable PDF with all of you.
This is the version I bought. You can get different versions, color or different paper size or similar.
As with many things in my life, I have satisficed with this activity. I haven’t fully completed every item in the document; but I’ve printed out several of the sections, and filled them out to the best of my current ability.
There is also a bound book format of this concept; I believe it has the exact title listed here. You can get it at any major retailer. I thought about getting that one, but I opted for a 3-ring binder, because it makes it easier to include printed-out sheets from my employer’s website and things of that nature.
One thing I did not anticipate in all this is having to shuffle the Friends/Contact Info page around. A close friend severed all ties with my social circle shortly after I started working on this book; crossing out her name on the page felt bad. But at the same time, it serves as a bit of a time capsule for my life at that point. I haven’t reprinted that page.
Some of the stuff here has overlap with the concept of a Butler’s Book: how to contact the utility company, etc. That’s fine. Redundancy is actually good, when you’re talking about critical systems, current zeitgeist notwithstanding.
That’s about all I’ve got for now. I’ll probably add a few more things over time as they occur to me, but this should do as far as summary blog posts go.
Every child, a world
This post is about the Israel/Hamas war.
This post by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is extremely powerful. Read the full thing before making comment.
https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/on-hostages-and-broken-hearts/
And try not to have a scarcity mindset around empathy.
Traditions
Most years since I had my kid, I try to put together a Christmas/holiday card to send to people so they can see how she’s grown, etc.
I try to also include photos of myself (and, when it was relevant, my husband) because of something Hax said a while ago about “orphans on the mantelpiece” that stuck with me. (See also: “Mom stays in the picture.”)
Some years, I have the wherewithal to put sealing wax on the envelopes. This is one of those years. I’m using a gnome stamp, because garden gnomes are A Thing for me, even though they’re now tinged with sadness.
Started out with the vegan wax, but honestly I don’t think it’s very good and won’t buy any more. I don’t know what makes it vegan; none of this is beeswax.
I stamp the envelopes from the back, so I don’t know who’s getting what color wax. The first wave are all green/vegan wax; after those I switched to purple with mix-ins.
I have a third type of wax, that I got from my mom. She had it in college, and her two stamps are (I think) associated with her sorority. (I did not join it myself, though I did consider it; but it was just not my thing. I joined a different one my junior year.) You can’t use that wax on envelopes that go through the postal system; it’s too brittle and will jam the machines. Modern wax is made differently; it’s safe for postal machines but it doesn’t give that satisfying snapping sound, or really break at all. It only seals and decorates.
I’m also listening to Christmas music. Started out with Mannheim Steamroller, which I love unironically, and then switched to the Robert Shaw Chorale. We Three Kings and Good King Wenceslas both go HARD. When my TKD teacher died, I listened to the bit about “mark my footsteps, good my page; tread thou in them boldly” and BAWLED. In a way, losing him was a preview of losing my father. Same thing when my closest uncle passed away. So because of that, and because of the general mood when it’s dark and cold, I think a lot about death this time of year.
But I also think of renewal. The dead are gone; but we remember them. My little wax sealing candle in 2024 is an echo of all the fires my ancestors have ever burned. I remember them now as others will remember me, down the long centuries. Listen!
- The Shortest Day, Susan Cooper
- The Turning of the Year, Herdman Hills Mangsen
Your reminder: end of life planning
Saw this tweet today, and thought I’d write a post about it.
https://twitter.com/AngryBlackLady/status/1609183979399438336?s=20&t=jb0ZW25N7l_Y44zkvimTwg
If you have any care for the people who come after you, you need to write a will.
It’s okay (not great, of course, but life is what it is) if you can’t afford the whole lawyer shebang at this stage of your life. Not everyone can afford to do the (important) legal part of their will. But all of us can do the emotional/mental labor of listing all our assets and debts, and writing down who you want to receive them when you die.
This goes beyond just bank accounts and cars and so forth. Do you have a collection of old Magic cards? A dear friend lost their brother this year, and he made sure to account for his collection in his last wishes. (I don’t know if he had a will or not. He was relatively young.) Anything you own will have to be disposed of when you pass, and your next of kin will be grateful to have some idea, any idea, of what you would like done with it. Even if the answer is “Sell it all to an estate sale company.” That’s still an answer.
If you have minor children, it becomes especially important to make sure they are cared for in the event of your passing. Do they have a Designated Guardian listed in your will? This isn’t a legally binding thing, but a court will take your wishes strongly into consideration when choosing a guardian for your child in the event of your death. Do you have life insurance? Who’s the beneficiary? Make sure it’s not an estranged parent, or anything like that.
Look, nobody likes to think about this stuff. But it’s important. A lot of what we call “adulting” is just the boring, painful parts of life that we do because not doing it makes things worse for the people we love. And since this is the time of year when everyone is being pensive and making resolutions, consider “making end of life plans” as an idea.
A friend of mine made a spreadsheet of Things To Do When You Are The Executor, when his father passed away. Here’s the folder for that. Note that none of us are lawyers, none of us are YOUR lawyer, and this is just a starting point for you to use in conjunction with your actual professional who has your back. But everyone needs a starting point, so if this helps you, I’m glad.
History is something that we make
Seeing all the retrospectives on Queen Elizabeth II’s life today makes me remember when my own family did that, at the end of my great-aunt’s life. (She lived to be 100 years old. We think she was holding on for that milestone, at the end.) She remembered when Amelia Earhart went down. She lived through both World Wars and the Great Depression. I don’t know if she ever had her own bank account.
I love this quote, from Terry Pratchett, about the speed of monarchic succession:
“The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles — kingons, or possibly queons — that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.”
Terry Pratchett, Mort
And the title of my post comes from this video by John Green.
It has been a long century. The next one will also be long. History is something that happens to us. But it is also something we make together.
John Green
Everything doesn’t happen for a reason
Years ago, I read this essay by Tim J. Lawrence, “Everything doesn’t happen for a reason.”
One of my extended family members goes into hospice this week, so it’s been on my mind.
Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.
He is one of the kindest people I have ever known. So was the first uncle I lost that I really knew well. (The first member of that generation to pass away in my family was an uncle who sustained brain damage at age 2, and as such I never really got to know him.)
I have already lost people my own age (though not in my family). I have already lost members of older generations. But the creeping onset of mortality is just getting more real, year after year.
But the goal, here, remains the same: Make your own purpose in life. And be kind to one another.
Organ donation
Here is another short form post!
One of my strongly held personal beliefs is that organ donation after death should be mandatory, with religious exceptions allowed. Broadly speaking, it should be opt-out, rather than opt-in.
There is no coherent reason (again, other than religious ones, which I’m not required to understand) to not err on the side of saving lives rather than on the side of more embalmed flesh in the ground, not even allowed to rot and give its nutrients back to the ecosystem.
At the same time, I’m aware that this is a very minority opinion, and I don’t work too hard to convince people that I’m right. It is what it is, you know?
Emilybook 