Let's Go Wild

#150: 3 May 2026 Preparing to die a good death....

I am curious for your input. Please use the comment button to make any suggestions, as requested below.

Two key, fundamental aspects of a human life focus on love and death. Modern is rife with myriad angles about love; all media, much of history, holidays and traditions speak directly to this very human experience. The opposite is true of death however. Modern distracts us, discourages us from thinking or planning about death, either our own or others’. The phrase, “Back then I was young and immortal” comes to mind; it typifies our disconnect from the reality of our death. Humans are one of few, if any, animals that can foresee death at some point in the future, and act accordingly. It’s ironic that for many of us, we don’t react despite this knowledge.

There are so many aspects to this topic of how we can develop, nurture, and transform a personal relationship with death. These include spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical concerns, of course. I have undertaken (I like the analogy to an undertaker!) a project to offer some common sense ways to prepare for my own death to share soon on a new Substack and website.

I have seen firsthand how our ignoring what is inevitable, our death, affects those we hold dear who remain. Families tear themselves apart fighting over the family home once parents have died. To see the end of healthy relationships and love turn to hate over stuff breaks my heart. But far worse are the situations when (typically) the husband has taken care of the finances throughout the marriage, and (typically) the wife has no idea not just about how to access their money, but even where any of it is. Too often there is no will that identifies anything of importance. This is compounded today when some assets are in cryptocurrency, and if no access information remains behind, those assets are lost to family forever. I have long used a concept known as “Letter of Instruction” to leave those types of details; account access, locations, requests for distribution of physical property such as my car, etc. with someone I trust to handle my affairs once I die. But as complexity grows, both in the culture, finance, and my own life’s path, so the amount of information I must gather and provide to my trustee grows. I have devised a complex document to remind me of what needs to be provided to make life as easy as possible for my family after I am gone. There is little to gain from secrecy, and much to gain from easing the trauma of loss and grief without compounding both with money worries and loss, too. There are myriad other aspects of my death that can be eased as well, including as one example, the idea of dying at home, not in a sterile hospital, and how to plan for a home funeral that immediately follows. We used to do this all the time…until the Modern notion of separation grabbed a stranglehold on the most transformative process we humans experience…our own death.

More on this soon; but today I’d ask that you comment on the most important topic concerning death that you feel uninformed about and that deserves a deeper conversation. I look forward to holding space for this transformational growth in our community. A Wild relationship with death is radically different from the Modern one; and I prefer the Wild one. How about you?