A Matter of Life and Death

As an only child with a single parent, I was always scared to death of losing my mother. Life without her was terrifying and unimaginable. As a child and a young adult, I pushed this fear to the far back corners of my mind and tried to avoid ever thinking about it.

And then, three years ago, I was forced to confront my greatest fear. My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died in January of 2010, leaving me a 28-year-old nuclear family of one.

Grief is a slow, strength-zapping, never-ending, emotional roller coaster that plunges you down when you least expect it and then propels you up, making you feel guilty for it. My grief, however, was nothing compared to the weight of taking on my mother’s end-of-life care.

Before my mom’s diagnosis, I knew nothing about hospice, palliative care, estate planning, wills or anything else related to death. Suddenly and without warning, I was unavoidably responsible for some really serious stuff. Insurance claims, two mortgages, at-home health care, financial planning, arranging my mother’s funeral and selling the home I grew up in (just to name a few from a very long list). To say that I was overwhelmed is a gigantic understatement.

They don’t teach you how to deal with this kind of stuff in college or in graduate school or even on the Internet, as I soon discovered. I blindly navigated my way through each intimidating task, growing more and more frustrated by the thing that no one wants to talk about but everyone has to deal with: death.

The inevitability of death—our own deaths and the deaths of those we love—is a fact of life. We can fear it, ignore it, or look the other way, but the fact remains that death touches all of us. I know this too well, and I know that just because we don’t want to talk about death, it doesn’t mean we won’t have to deal it at some point. This is why, when I learned of Everplans, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved. Yes! A place where people aren’t shy to talk about death!

As a team, we strive to deliver straightforward, valuable information about planning for the future, protecting your loved ones and assets, and managing everything life throws at you after a death.

The conversation will continue with my regular column, "A Matter of Life and Death." Every few weeks, I’ll check in to share personal stories, advice, the good, the bad, and sometimes surprisingly funny stuff related to end-of-life planning and death. The more we talk, the more we can help make death a less daunting, more controllable fact of life. I know that I for one could’ve really used that conversation three years ago.

‘Til next time,
Lauren