So I’ve spent a couple days now covering the why of the death book, and today I’ll dig into the how.

Dealing with the deaths of my parents showed me that I had a need for something to document all the things that would need to be passed off to someone when I die. But I still didn’t have the how of it. Except I actually did.

I’d spent a chunk of my life working in rotational positions. Jobs where multiple people rotated through a particular position. And the key part of that rotation process was the turnover. This was meant to ensure that nothing fell through the cracks between incoming and outgoing personnel. A warm turnover would be when you have some time to sit with the person you’re replacing. A cold turnover would be when the person you’re replacing is already gone by the time you get into the hot seat.

I realized I was trying to prepare for the most final of cold turnovers. And I realized I knew how to do it. All you needed was a very thoroughly documented book. Something that pointed out all the key details. Usually, a cold turnover book or binder would leave instructions for the incoming person regarding what meetings to attend, what the daily schedule looked like, important login details for various accounts, combinations for safes, what have you. The day-to-day stuff. Whatever bits of knowledge were needed to keep everything running smoothly. And this was what I needed. Something to leave behind so someone else could pick up the pieces right where I’d left them.

I now knew what I needed. I looked around my office and found an elegant solution for myself.

Long before the days when everyone just kept their calendars on their phone, my father had gifted me a Filofax personal organizer. This was a clever little system, made up of a nice looking binder/notebook and various inserts to fill it. I’ve since moved on to using my phone to keep track of my calendar, like most people, but the Filofax always stayed in a desk drawer. Both because it was a thoughtful gift when I needed it, and because it was too nice to just get rid of. And now, it had found a new purpose.

I dug out the Filofax and added some fresh inserts. I started with blank notebook pages. I figured this would be best to just start writing things down. I also added a zipper pouch, thinking that it could be useful to hold small documents or keys or whatever little items that needed to be kept close by. Lastly, I added some tabbed separators so I could split the notebook pages into sections, and I threw in a neat little insert that had a bunch of sticky note tabs and note pages.

Now my framework was in place. I had a canvas to work with. All that was left was to fill it with all the details of my life that would be useful if someone had to pick up wherever I left off.

Tomorrow, I’ll dig into the contents. I’ll go over my process for how I decided what to include, what to exclude, and how I plan to expand it as time goes on. Until next time!

I know I said yesterday that today I’d dig into the details of my death book. But we’re not quite there yet. There’s still one more story to tell.

After I’d finished sorting through the life of my father, I began talking more about the whole process with my mother. They hadn’t been together in quite a long time, so she wasn’t there for the actual clearing out and sorting part. But I would occasionally vent to her about how difficult some aspects of it were, namely the parts related to tying up all his loose ends. Or even finding out where all the loose ends were. Closing bank accounts. Finding titles for vehicles. Finding what keys went to what. All the little things that we know about our own lives, that we just never think to share with anyone else because we can never imagine why they would need to know. (Fun side story: my father had a desk drawer that was filled with keys. There must have been at least 75-100 keys in there. I never figured out what any of them went to, because I found all the keys I needed elsewhere. I still wonder if maybe he just liked to collect them.)

Seeing how hard it had been for me going through all that without a map to guide me, my mother promised to do better with her own affairs. And she absolutely did. For one, she lived a much simpler life than my father. That definitely helped. She also lived in a small apartment, only a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and dining room, and a couple hall closets. And she kept it comfy, but never cluttered. She also took note of my biggest struggles with things like the banks. She made it a point to have me listed as a beneficiary on her bank accounts. This way, I wouldn’t have to deal with a probate lawyer, which was what I’d had to do when my father died.

She also started telling me things. She started keeping a drawer, she said. And she was going to put things in that drawer than would be important whenever her time came. It was a good idea, and I was proud of her for thinking of it.

But that had been a few years ago. And time puts demands on us every day. So what was once a “when I die, check this drawer” drawer eventually became an other things drawer as well. As drawers so often do. They collect things. And things get moved. And life goes on. Until it doesn’t.

This year time caught up with my mother as well. There was more time to prepare, at least. Cancer can sometimes give you that, if it’s feeling generous. But not so much time. I remember her specifically complaining about this. She’d had a diagnosis, and had just finished a chemo treatment. Things were looking good enough. Maybe even promising. But then everything went in another direction, and I got the call from the hospital that she had between hours and days left. When I got in to see her the following day, she was somewhere between angry and surprised.

“Days,” she said. “They’re telling me days! What happened to ‘you’ve got six months left to live’? They just skipped right past it!” She wasn’t wrong, but even knowing you have time at all is its own gift.

She ended up stretching her days into a couple more weeks. They weren’t the best weeks, but there were some good moments in there. And I’m grateful to have had the time with her in the end. But there was no time to do all the things she wanted to do. She wanted to get her affairs in order. She thought she would have had more time. She thought there would’ve been more warning. She’d been waiting for someone to tell her she had a few months left, not a few days.

I tried to help her. She wanted to write down instructions on who to give her furniture to, who to give her books to, who to get in touch with at the bank, who to give her cat to. I got her a notebook, but her fine motor skills had already deteriorated and she couldn’t hold the pencil. I tried to take notes for her, but the hospice meds had her slipping in and out of consciousness so frequently that she struggled to string two thoughts together.

So I put the notebook away. The moment of preparing had passed. We just accepted it, and settled into the moment we were in. The moment of saying our goodbyes. I’m glad we got to have that.

It only took me a week to settle my mother’s affairs. Her apartment was small and easy to sort through. She didn’t have a car to sell. The bank had me listed on her account, as she’d said, and so no lawyer was needed to close it out. She’d even made her own funeral arrangements, which was a huge burden off my shoulders. She’d been listening, and she did a great job of making it easier for me.

In the days and weeks that followed, family members would ask how I was doing. Aunts and uncles. Around the same age as my parents. They would ask questions that I knew they wanted their own kids to have the answers to. “So what kinds of things did you have to deal with?”…”Did you have to hire a lawyer?”…”Did they have wills?” It was good that they were asking these questions. I knew that my cousins would at some point have to go through the same moments that I’d been going through, and I was happy to see that their parents were trying to learn some kind of lesson here. And I found myself in a position to help them.

So I started telling them what lesson I’d learned. I told them that I’d started keeping a death book of my own. I’d kept notes of all the questions I had to find answers to when I was dealing with the deaths of my parents. All the things I needed to locate. Paperwork that needed to be tracked down. Wishes that needed to be fulfilled. And I took those notes and turned them to my own use. I started answering those questions for myself. And I started writing down my answers in a book.

This idea caught on within my family, and they started following up with me. They wanted to know what exactly needed to go in a death book. What kinds of questions needed answers? What kind of notebook? What else should go in it? They wanted a guidebook. A map. And I totally understood where they were coming from.

Tomorrow, we’ll dive into exactly that. I’ll go through what steps I took to build my book, what went into it and what it can ultimately do. It won’t be a definitive or exhaustive list. But it’ll be a place to start. A guide. A map.

Before we start digging into the process of building a death book (I know, still need a better name for it), I’d like to walk through how I came to the idea of making one in the first place.

The idea came from my own father, more than anywhere else. Growing up, he would point out on occasion that he wouldn’t always be around. That he, too, was mortal. And that someday I’d be responsible for whatever he left behind. A few years ago, that day finally came. Sooner and more suddenly than either of us expected. But I think that’s how it goes more often than not.

Over the years, he would tell me little things to make note of when the time came. “I keep all my vehicle titles in this briefcase,” or “I’ve got a safe deposit box at this bank, and you’re listed on it.” Things that he thought would be helpful. And every time, I’d just nod and smile, acknowledging that he was doing his best to prepare me for a day neither of us really wanted to think about.

But of course that day came. Because it comes for all of us. And when I arrived at his house, I didn’t remember a single damned thing he’d ever told me over the years about where anything important was. Instead, my head was a hive of bees, trying to process a world without him in it. That’s grief for you.

When I started clearing out his home, I discovered that he’d become a bit of a hoarder in his later years. Not horribly so, but nothing that made the task easier. I had to dig through drawer after drawer of random envelopes, old bills going back decades, file folders organized in a system that made sense to him, but only him. There were 13 rooms in total that I had to go through, and it ended up taking me two months to do it. Partially because of the sheer quantity of it all, but also because every single thing was another little piece of the man I’d never see again. And that makes everything harder.

The entire time I was there, going drawer by drawer and room by room, trying to make sense of a life lived, I kept wishing that he’d left me a road map of some sort. A guide to it all. A will would have been a great start, but that was something he’d never gotten around to. I’m guessing many out there reading this also don’t have one. (Pro tip: write a will! It’s not hard, and it will make things easier for those you leave behind when that time comes.)

When I finished packing up and clearing out 69 years worth of accumulated things, I’d found most everything I was looking for. I had people who helped, and for whom I am forever grateful. But what I never found was that map. Some things came back to me, like when I’d opened a random briefcase in the back of a closet and found a handful of vehicle titles. His words would come back to me, and I’d kick myself for not having remembered. I kept saying I should have written it down when he told me. But then I realized, he should have written it down when he said it.

And that’s when I started my own death book. I know I’ll die someday. But I do not know when that day will come. And I would hate to put my son through that same process. So after I got home from burying my father, I started writing down my own notes. Things that would help those I leave behind. And that eventually evolved into my death book.

Tomorrow I’ll dig into the details more. But I want to leave you with one last suggestion. The holidays are upon us. Families are gathering once again. This is a great time to start talking with people about end-of-life planning. I know, it’s a great way to ruin the mood. But if you do it right, if you just plant the seed of the idea, maybe it’ll take root, and maybe, when the unescapable occurs, it’ll make someone’s early days of grief a little easier. Maybe even your own.