Family Conversations
The letter you leave behind
Of everything people leave, the thing most consistently valued is a letter, and it is the thing most consistently not written.
Topic
family
Every Before Last Wish article tagged family — 10 pieces across 4 sections.
Family Conversations
When you are both the executor and the family
Administering an estate while grieving, for a family who are also beneficiaries, is a combination of roles that generates most of the complaints made against executors.
Grief & After
Clearing the house
Sorting through someone’s possessions is among the hardest tasks in bereavement, and it is frequently done too quickly, by the wrong people, in the wrong order.
Family Conversations
Estrangement at the end of a life
When someone who is estranged from the family is dying, everyone involved faces decisions with no good options and a short timescale.
Funeral Planning
Planning your own funeral: what to write down
Recording what you want costs nothing, takes an hour, and removes the single largest source of stress and disagreement for the people arranging it.
Advance Directives
Organ and tissue donation: how the systems work
Donation systems differ substantially between countries, and in nearly all of them the family is asked regardless of what you registered. Which makes telling them the decisive step.
Family Conversations
Talking to children about death
Children handle honest information far better than adults expect, and considerably worse than euphemism, which they interpret literally and find frightening.
Family Conversations
When the family disagrees
Conflict at the end of a life is usually not about the decision in front of everyone. Understanding what it is actually about is the only route through it.
Advance Directives
Choosing a healthcare proxy, and what you are asking of them
The person who makes medical decisions for you if you cannot is doing one of the hardest jobs anyone can be asked to do. Choosing them on the basis of closeness is usually a mistake.
Family Conversations
How to raise it: starting the conversation without a crisis
The conversation is difficult mostly because of how it usually gets started — during a health scare, at a hospital bedside, or in the middle of an argument about something else.