Get Your Affairs In Order! I mean, really.
[This is part 2 of a multi-part essay. Part 1 can be read here]
Life changes in an instant. <← That is such a cliche. We’ve all heard it. Some of us have heard it many many times. And, we nod sagely, we agree and we move on.
For most, life does not change in an instant.
For most, life just chugs along… I mean, ask people what’s new and the answer is, usually, oh nothing, same old same old. And it is true.
Until it isn’t.
For many of us, life chugs along, boring, same, repetitive and then, BAM. It changes.
And, because it simply chugs along, we defer things. We defer a lot of the important stuff we should be doing. The important stuff we should be taking care of. The important things that we should be putting in order for that day when it is, you know, actually important.
So, well, Paul died. He is gone. Like, really. Gone. Dead.
Among the first things we thought about was that we need to tell people.
Good news travels fast, bad news travels faster.
Isn’t that what the saying is? Something like that, no? Well, people need to know.
OK, fair. People need to know. Dad gets on the phone and starts calling / texting his peeps. Wife does the same. And then, she looks up and says that we need to tell Paul’s friends. Yeah, we all agree. We do. Who has their contacts?
The wife, long story, is estranged and really like a room-mate so she doesn’t have the contact info. None of us do. Oh, shit.
But wait, all is not lost! They are all on his phone.
Ok, so who has his password? iPhone’s are notorious for being hard to break into. That is good… until it is not.
Needless to say, no one had the iPhone password and we could not get to his contacts. My wife then did the next best thing and posted about his death on Facebook (which I hate but that is where most people our generation hang out so it does work).
That is how all of Paul’s friends found out. Not with a personal text or call. Via an impersonal Facebook post. That really sucks. This type of news is hard enough to get, let alone getting it via Facebook.
At some point, not today but some day soon, we will need to start the drudgery of doing the forensics on Paul’s financials — finding out all his assets so they go to his kids / estate. I sure wish we had his passwords. And that he had his trust and will in place (that’s a whole other story).
So, friends — Get Your Affairs In Order! Don’t care how, lots of info on the interwebs or, even better, talk to a professional. But, please don’t keep pushing it off. and also remember to update it as your children age — what was solution for a toddler may no longer fit a teen, college student or adult. So, not always a 1 and done these days.
Your survivors will thank you.
[This is part 2 of a multi-part series. More to come….. ]
