They’re dead ...Now what?

Lightening the load of Sadmin

Funerals have been described as ‘the most emotionally led impulsive purchase we’ll ever make’, something likely to ring true for anyone who’s ever faced needing to buy one when they’ve felt least able to do so.

When someone dies, we enter a liminal world. Nothing feels real. Nothing feels like it has anything to do with us. We don’t even feel like us anymore. That’s because we’re not. The relationships we have mould us. When one of them changes so fundamentally, so do we. This is entirely normal. Entirely to be expected. What’s less normal is anyone saying this out loud to us.

What’s always unexpected is the sheer weight of admin that accompanies the death of even the most organised of people. In the days following a death, we are at our very least capable of sadmin. It’s an overwhelm we wade our way through when all we actually feel capable of is inhaling and exhaling. And even then sometime ... meh. When people look back on these days and weeks from the vantage point of time, they often have no recollection of going through these motions, let alone of feeling alert enough to make the whole world of decisions required of them.

We’ve no control over death. It’s one of death’s very worst bits, and it has plenty of those. What we can control though is how we prepare for it. It’s not macabre, it’s not sombre and it’s certainly not tempting fate. It is sad, but then lots of the prep we’re already so accustomed to doing in our lives is too, if we stopped to think about it.

Your car’s insured, right? You’ve travel insurance for that holiday you’re so looking forward to, haven’t you? You’ve (really very sensibly) future-proofed yourself against all manner of potential hideousness by doing so. Planning a funeral in advance, or at least getting a record of your preferences together, is no different. In buying insurance we cover ourselves in the hope that we’ll never actually need to use the safety net of that cover. We’re guaranteed we’ll need this safety net, though.

If you’d like to make first steps towards working out how to plan your own funeral or the funeral of someone else, you’ll find lots of free help and advice on our website. Alternatively, book a session and take control for yourself. It’s the only sensible way forward.