I encourage my clients to speak with their families about their estate plans and end of life wishes to make things easier on everyone during a crisis. I sometimes suggest that far flung families do this during get-togethers over the the holiday season. There are even services like Death Over Dinner that can help you plan a dinner to talk about your wishes and help facilitate the conversations.
People sometimes think it sounds morbid but it doesn’t need to be. An aging relative of mine recently asked some of us to come to his house so he could go over a few things with us “just in case.” As the family keeper of many old papers and photographs, I brought some boxes of memorabilia with me so that he could help us identify some of the people and occasions before they were lost to history.
We went over the standard things – where the spare key to his house was, where his important papers were and who his attorney and other advisors were. He pointed out some heirlooms that we may have not known about and also told us that he has a service which calls him three times a day to make sure he is ok. He seemed to feel better while sharing this information, and I certainly felt better knowing that in an emergency the contingency plans could easily be activated.
After the “business” part of the visit was done, we sat down to go through the boxes I’d brought. He helped us identify the people (and explained that the small children we thought were girls were actually boys dressed as girls, which I guess was the custom at the time, and so some of my labels on them had to be changed.) He shared funny stories with us about his adventures and stories of family members who passed before our time.
I realized that the momentary discomfort of acknowledging that we all (if we are lucky) get old and will eventually die was far surpassed by the benefits of this type of family meeting. Not having these conversations doesn’t prevent bad things from happening nor does having them bring bad things about. All it does is make everyone’s lives a little easier when there is a crisis. And you can use the visit to help fill in the holes of a family history, too.
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