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What Would You
Be Taking to Your Grave?
By Susan Law Corpany
Time’s Up
Last week somebody forwarded to me an obituary
penned by the deceased. Unless there have been some major advances
in communication, he must have written it beforehand. Most of us
don’t come even close to that level of preparation. What a
novel idea!
I was inspired as I read it and have
decided to write my own. “She leaves behind legions of fans,
heartbroken children and grandchildren and a grief-stricken husband.
Condolences can be sent to ThomC@LDSSinglesonline.com.” Okay,
maybe not. I’ll think about it.
As I get older, though, I find myself more aware
of the need to consider the fact that I, too, may not be around
forever. I am desirous of leaving behind all necessary information
to make life easier for my family members. Death is something we
shy away from discussing and thinking about, and thereby preparing
for as we should. I would like today to ask each reader to imagine
you have slipped away quietly in your sleep. Perhaps that makes
it easier to think about. (Besides, I don’t know about you,
but that’s my plan.)
After the passing of a lady in our ward, I once
told my son “That’s how I want to go, quietly in bed,
and just have the book slip out of my hand.”
Reminding me that there can be a downside to
everything, he said, “Do you really want to go through all
eternity not knowing how the book ended?”
So I’ll even grant that you have finished
the book, but you’re gone. Imagine now that the funeral services
are over (next column we’ll talk about your preparation for
that) and your spouse is trying to pick up the pieces of his or
her life.
Take Stock
Although I talk in terms of married couples,
this does not preclude that these things are important if you are
single. Single people should always make at least one other family
member aware of their financial dealings and other pertinent information.
Substitute “family” wherever I say “spouse,”
and you’ve got it covered.
Every situation is unique. I had a friend whose
husband died. She grew up with a father who taught her how to fix
things, and she was the handy one around the house. He loved to
cook. After his passing, she asked me, “When brothers volunteer
to come over and hang our new blinds, how do I tell them I need
the Relief Society to bring in dinner?”
Only you know the functions you fill in your
family and what information needs to be passed along. You can start
by asking yourself these questions:
Does my spouse know all he or she would need
to know about our life insurance coverage?
Does he or she know about our bill paying, bank
accounts, financial dealings?
Does he or she know about how to maintain our
automobiles, how to run the appliances, how to turn on or off the
automatic sprinklers? Does your husband know the dryer has a lint
screen? Does your wife know the car needs power steering fluid?
Does your wife know the dryer has a lint screen? Does your husband
know the car needs power steering fluid? Assume nothing.
What things have I handled almost exclusively
that my partner would be in the dark about?
Do they know the pertinent information
they would need to know about our children, their schools, their
allergies, which one won’t eat broccoli or wear yellow?
Have I got functions on the computer my spouse
should know about? Am I the only one who knows the combination to
the lock on our storage unit? Perhaps you have an address book set
up on your email account and a message about your passing and funeral
could be sent out to friends and relatives far away with the click
of a button, but you have never told your husband or wife your password.
Assignment
As you go through the functions of your life
this next month or two, have a small notebook handy. Ask yourself
as you perform tasks what information you should write down about
the things you do. You will likely be surprised at what you discover.
For example, I just signed on to a vacation
rental exchange website to find us accommodations the week of our
son’s wedding. Because we have a vacation rental house, we
are able to exchange nights at our property for nights at other
locations. I handle that.
My husband not only does not know the password,
he doesn’t know the name of the website. If I died, we might
have points that could be used to procure accommodations for out-of-town
guests, a necessary function at a time of loss, but he would not
be able to do it. Whatever points we had accumulated would likely
go unused, because I have not made him aware of the information
he would need. Nothing comes in the mail. There might be an email
or two, but he wouldn’t see them because he wouldn’t
know what to look for.
In my first column in April, I will come back
with a list of all the things like this I discovered, and perhaps
stories from a few other people. One place I find handy to write
passwords, user names, and so on, is on the inside of pertinent
file folders. Even if I have not told Thom that is where to look,
chances are he might check the file if he was trying to find out
information about my frequent flier miles and whether or not they
were transferable so that he could fly to Arizona to meet my possible
replacement . . .
Never mind. If he needs to know the password,
I can communicate it to him from the great beyond.
Times Have Changed
The joke used to be about Great Aunt
Martha dying, never having given anyone the secret of her flaky
pie crust. What information are you going to take with you to the
grave? In these days of dependence on computers, there isn’t
a paper trail like there might have been in the past. Do you really
want to put your loved ones through the “paperless chase?”
In the past, when someone died there was the
sense that “whatever we can’t find or don’t know,
we’ll likely come across it when we start to sort things out.”
The genealogy was on concrete family group sheets, not on an easily-misplaced
or overlooked CD, which may or may not be labeled. Keys were tangible,
and even if you didn’t know what they went to, you could try
them all until you found the right one. With passwords and combinations,
that doesn’t work as well. We need to update our organization
to keep up with the time in which we live — the electronic
age.
Remember, no matter how far we have
come, we still can’t send a message to grandpajoe978876@thegreatbeyond.com.
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