Life and the fact that it is terminal has been a thought close to me lately. Watching my mothers life slow down, seeing the mother of a close friend move rapidly into the depths of Alzheimers, having a friend die suddenly have all added to my own musings about the simple reality that the destiny of each of our lives is death. Dealing with the aftermath of those people who have not prepared for their demise has brought me to some attempts to be sure my own affairs are in reasonable order just in case.
Now I'm not planning an imminant exit at all. I'm only planning on an eventual demise. Even though I intend to live for ever it doesnt seem that many before me have accomplished staying in this life permanently. With this in mind I have done the following things.
The first was to prepare a will. However small my holdings are I prefer to designate their disposal rather than leaving those decisions unattended. The choices at first seemed simple. I have three daughters. Dividing everything among them equally seems a good the fairest way. At least that takes care of any bits of liquid asset. The girls and I have discussed what things they might each want from my possessions. I'm relatively satisfied that they are capable of selecting for themselves without a battle. I've specifically instructed that they provide mementos to friends and that the remainder be divided between the girls with some personal options regarding donations to charities of their choice.
That all looks reasonable and I anticipate the distribution will go well. One of my concerns is the circumstances and capacity of one daughter. She is in a situation where her husband has a huge debt load. Neither he nor she is very competent at handling money. I would not want to see her portion simply absorbed in clearing her husbands irresponsible spending. In lieu of leaving her free access to her portion I've opted to place it in trust from which she can draw under the guidance of a trustee. I've taken care to explain the reasoning behind this step and she does understand.
Of course I've made a directive in regard to my choices in the case that at sometime I am not capable of making either financial or life decisions. The important point here for me is that I dont want my children to have the burden of deciding to keep or remove artificial means of keeping my body alive. Far better to make my choices clear before hand in my opinion. I also would prefer that, in the case of mental incapacity, my children make decisions rather than a court.
With all of those things in place I've been free to look at other issues. I've made my choices clear in regard to funeral arrangements and disposition. I've provided for my pets. I've even given direction in regard to funeral/memorial issues. Hopefully nothing has been left to chance.
The remaining choice has been around notification of my friends and contacts. My children know most of those people but I've extended the contact to include those who my children may not have met. With this in mind I've provided a method for them to open my email contact list and an instruction to send a general notification to the entire list.
The remaining friends are those who are here in SoulCast. Many people here are, in my view, as important to me as my real time friends. I've considered my own concerns if a friend here should suddenly disappear. I've looked at my contacts list and seen some who I've enjoyed exchanges with who have already vanished. I miss them and I wonder what happened to them. With this in mind I've also left instructions to accessing my SoulCast account and requested that my children post the details here should anything unexpected happen.
Have you done these things?
