Death and Destruction

Something that's come up multiple times over the past several months: Why do you talk so much about disaster preparation if the area of your practice is death cleaning and transition coaching?

Folks are resistant to death planning, which death cleaning is a part of. It's too complicated, it's too intimidating, I don't have anything worth making a plan for, those are all reasons (among many more) I've heard as to why folks just can't with planning for death.

Now disaster preparation is also called too complicated, too intimidating, not something folks are concerned with. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but things have been getting spicier lately with weather. Tornadoes, storms, floods, record cold, record heat, drought, fires, everybody is catching something and each thing seems to disrupt and destroy a bit more each time. People wind up having to make it through an event the best they can, but then they have to rebuild/recover/recoup somehow. Having a plan for these kinds of situations is becoming more and more necessary, and folks are starting to understand it as such, even if they still think it's onerous.

Disaster preparation covers the things in the immediate term (things like flashlights, water, and food). But if you're putting together a robust plan, it will also cover long term recovery (things like financial matters, insurance, and your possessions). The things you need to do and have on hand in order to recover beyond the immediate disaster are the things that make up major parts of death planning. Not all of it, no, but enough to provide a really good running start for people.

My theory is folks are more open to talking about and planning for disasters vs talking about and planning for death because disaster preparation has the implied assumption of survival, where death planning does not.

For example, meeting with resistance with a parent or an elder loved one when it comes to even talking about death planning? Pick the local disaster most likely to happen, and dig in on that. If a frozen pipe burst, or a wildfire struck, or a hurricane or tornado came through, what would be the things they'd be upset about losing? What would they try to recoup on insurance? What are the irreplaceable sentimental items? What are the stories behind them? What's of value and what's valued by them? These are questions you can use to lead them to perhaps make an inventory of their possessions. (see where i'm going with this?) If the list is done for insurance purposes, you've got values, AND it's possible to use the list as a jumping off point to talk about what they'd like to have happen to various items once they're gone.

My mailing list has a running feature I call Auntie Prepper. (because i’m trying to make disaster prep more accessible and pragmatic than the bunkers/bullets/beans approach) If you want in on it, please sign up! I roll through things cyclically, and the info repeats eventually, so don’t worry about catching up. In the meantime, hi! I’m (hopefully) back to blogging on the regular. There’s a lot to catch you up with.