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WHAT WILL BE YOUR legacy? This is something I’ve given a lot of thought to—right down to the funeral instructions.
Something I’ve learned through hard experience: One of the greatest gifts we can give to our families is a well-organized and well-communicated estate plan. They’ll appreciate it when the time comes.
Too many of us wait until an emergency to try to get our affairs in order. A severe illness or death is stressful enough. We shouldn’t compound it by failing to have the right documents in place. A good estate plan can take many forms. At a minimum, it should include:
It’s never too early to work on these. A letter of last instruction should be kept up to date with key details, including financial information, location of important documents, and funeral instructions. None of us wants to think about our funeral, but it helps those left behind to know what we wanted.
I’ve been thinking about an aspect of funeral planning that gets little attention. Do we want to make it easy for friends and family to visit our final resting place? This is a very personal choice. As families move and become more spread out, picking the right location gets harder.
My wife and I have an annual tradition with one of her older brothers and his wife. A few weeks before Christmas, we take a day and visit three cemeteries in the Philadelphia suburbs where a host of family members are buried, including my wife’s parents and grandparents, and my parents and grandparents. We leave a floral arrangement on each grave. When we’re done, we go somewhere festive for lunch, and talk about family and the upcoming holidays.
Others have different traditions. I have a friend who’s an only child. He grew up in Florida, where his parents are now buried. He spent most of his adult life in the Philadelphia suburbs. Each year, he makes a solitary trip to Florida to visit his parents’ gravesite. He told me he felt someone should visit them at least once a year.
When we lived in Pennsylvania, we were about 15 minutes’ drive from my parents’ and grandparents’ graves. We used to stop by a few times each year, around Christmas, on birthdays or on Mother’s Day. Since moving last year to Monmouth County, New Jersey, it’s harder to get there, but we’ll make sure we keep up our Christmas tradition.
In the wake of our recent move, I need to work on our estate plan. We should update our wills and powers of attorney. Our letter of last instruction is also out of date.
I’ve been very open about my funeral wishes. I want a modern version of a Viking funeral. All my family and friends will gather at my favorite beach in my favorite South Jersey beach town. I will be laid out in an old-fashioned wooden lifeguard boat. The boat will get pushed out past the breakers, and then my grandsons will shoot flaming arrows into the boat. After the funeral pyre burns down, they’ll all go to one of our favorite hangouts to celebrate. I recommend doing it after Labor Day, when the crowds are smaller.
Truth be told, it’s not clear such funerals were common among the Vikings. It’s also not clear whether any of this is legal in New Jersey.
Maybe I need to do a little more research.
Richard Connor is a semi-retired aerospace engineer with a keen interest in finance. He enjoys a wide variety of other interests, including chasing grandkids, space, sports, travel, winemaking and reading. Follow Rick on Twitter @RConnor609 and check out his earlier articles.
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My husband’s family has some plots at a cemetery in Palo Alto, CA (Bay Area near Stanford). His uncle, grandparents, and aunt are buried there. His mom and stepdad already have plots purchased there. I’ve been to three different family funerals at that facility, each followed by a reception at the same Sheraton nearby. No one in the family lives in the Bay Area anymore, though.
EDITED TO ADD: People did live in that part of the Bay Area when the first of those family members passed. But no one has lived nearby since 2007.
I’ve thought about when my mother-in-law and her husband pass (they’re in their 80s now). They live in Southern California, so transporting them to Palo Alto’s going to be a thing. I’m not sure which family members would be alive and/or willing to travel to this location where no one in the family lives for a ceremony. Yet those are their wishes, and my husband is their executor, so he’ll get to make all this happen. Once it does, though, there will be no one to visit, either.
My family has no such history. When my dad passed at 61, he was cremated and his ashes scattered from a boat in the San Francisco Bay. It was a windy day in spring, and…well, let’s just say that bay cruise was the stuff nightmares are made of. I’m thankful that I didn’t bring my two kids, who were still pretty young, on that excursion. It definitely made me motivated not to insist that my loved ones have to scatter me anywhere in particular once I’m gone.
I find myself quite uninterested in this question. Every time I get a postcard from the local funeral home asking if I’d like an appointment, I shrug and think, “I don’t care. I’ll be dead. What’s the least amount of trouble and expense for my family?”
Dr Ledty, thanks for reading and sharing. I feel for your husband handling difficult estate and burial challenges as week as he loss of a parent.
I like the idea! I’m Scandanavian too. Read the “Viking Heart.”
Rich, thanks for reading and the suggestion. I’ll check it out.
My closest relatives, going back at least three generations, are buried in a small cemetery in Monmouth County, New Jersey, so I bought a plot there in a spot near my parents and sister, with a headstone yet to be added. I figure relatives can get a great package deal for just one visit, and I want to be included. It is said that as long as you are remembered, you are not really gone yet.
However, I have a different dilemma. I’ve gone back and forth about being cremated or not, but that’s not my dilemma. It is this: What would be an appropriate thing to have on a headstone? (That is, beyond the basic name, birth date and death date.) Something that would be somewhat memorable, but that is not tacky. (It’s not exactly a vanity plate.)
Martin thanks for reading and sharing. I now live in Monmouth County and it’s a wonderful area to live, and it seems to rest peacefully.
Something unique about you or something you love?
So, in the end, you’re going to make an ash of yourself!
Well said Rick
Rick, thanks for the important reminders. As for visiting the gravesites of loved ones, I’ll add my experience. My parents are both interred in crypts in a mausoleum, and they pre-arranged it, which was indeed a gift to their kids. It’s a large and imposing, cold, marble filled building and I’ve never had a desire to visit them there. But, although they both died over 20 years ago, I think about them almost every day.
Thanks for sharing Andrew.
I would suggest adding The Five Wishes to your list of documents. This will guide medical professionals and family members to support the level of care your wish to have. It is superior to a Medical Power of Attorney.
https://www.fivewishes.org/
Harold, thanks for reading and sharing the link.
There is a 2003 movie with the entire Douglas family (Michael, Kirk, and Cameron) with a funeral pyre funeral on a lake for their uncle. It didn’t turn out so well.
https://youtu.be/MjBy15Th-PE?si=g_DcXS8xdnKn4v3O
David, thanks for reading and sharing the movie suggestion. I’ll check it out.
Wonderful article! Great title!
Thanks for the kind words Mom& Dad. Jonathan gets full marks for the title.
We’ve done everything on the list but the funeral plans.
I kinda like the funeral pyre idea. But, somehow, I don’t think it’s possible to do that these days. I sure won’t care what is done.
As to our legacy … it is to leave as much money as we can to our kids.
We have asked the child picked (by both us and our other kids) as executor to try to donate something to our favorite local charity in our names.
Winston, thanks for reading and sharing. I like your plans!
My mother wrote her own obituary and provided detailed plans for her funeral. As executor of her estate, I was very thankful that she did this, as one member of our family had her own ideas of how mother’s funeral should be conducted. I honored my mother’s wishes.
I have also written my own obituary and the elements of my funeral. This is one less thing my loved ones will have to.
It is a little weird to write you own obituary, but I recommend that you do it. Your family will be grateful.
Jerry, sounds like you are a great son, and respectful of your loved ones. Thanks for reading.
I need to update my final instructions. The old paperwork specifies who gets my 8-track tapes.
I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Woody
Mike, I love the quote. I have some VHS tapes I need to consider.
I haven’t written my own obituary, but I did leave a timeline in my final letter so they have the raw data to write one. Also, since I wanted to be cremated I specified that. Similarly, I’m uninterested in a service but do wish for a celebration of life party. I agree that explicitly stating some of those things can really relieve those settling the estate from any angst regarding what’s appropriate for or desired by the deceased.
OIT, thanks for reading and sharing. It is tough to contemplate our demise, and writing my obituary seems like an act of hubris. I am right with you on the celebration of life party. I just want mine in a beach with a flaming life guard boat.
Love the funeral idea! I’m going to copy you. Highly unlikely we’d be arrested.
Tom, feel free to use it. I’m more worried about my grandsons getting in trouble, but they are clever kids!
Rick, Nice article. I live thousands of miles from where my father is buried and am jealous of opportunities my siblings have to visit his gravesite (and silently update him on life’s progress). Even in death, it’s “location, location, location”.
Jeff, thanks for reading and sharing. Part of the benefit of visiting gravesites is it provides us the opportunity to think about those that have gone before us. So many people never get the chance to do that – I think of my extended family’s emigrant ancestors from Ireland and Italy. Most of them never got back to their birthplaces to see their families, let alone to visit a grave site. We can adopt rituals to take their place. Maybe a sibling could FaceTime (or equivalent) you from the gravesite?
Good reminders, Richard, but of course even the best intentions can go awry. For at least 30 years, my father annually updated me about his estate plan and final wishes. We had many such discussions. He had all the legal documents, a letter of instructions, sample budget sheets should he become incapacitated, and even a preliminary draft of an estate tax form. I had copies of everything. As Alzheimer’s crept in, his wishes changed. My father desperately wished to change his will and, for the sake of family harmony, I found an attorney willing to write a new one. (Actually, finding one was astonishingly easy.) For the same reason, I never enacted the powers of attorney; my father had not wished for my step-mother to manage the household finances, yet she ended up doing that for about four years. And the bucolic and seemingly remote forest that we had visited, for which I had the geographic coordinates and where he wished his ashes spread? That had become a subdivision.
Jo Bo, thanks for reading and sharing. It’s very true that the best laid plans don’t always work out. But plan we must. I’ve often head that we all have an estate plan – it’s either one we create, or one the state executes for you.
But family dynamics can be amazingly complicated. I’ve heard chilling stories of what siblings and relatives do to “get their fair share” of an estate. But I’ve also seen many occasions where families pull together and take care of loved ones and fairly distribute estates.
It sounds like you took good care of your father and respected his wishes. You should be proud of that.
I’ll add one more item to your list. Write your obituary! It’ll give you the opportunity to say what others will read about you and save your survivors the anguish of having to do it in the stressful days after your death.
That’s a great idea — I did it too. I open it about once a year to update/delete.
Bob, thanks for reading and sharing. That’s a great point. I’ve heard it said that we should write our obituaries as young adults, and it will help guide your life’s choices.
Who says tax guys don’t have a sense of humor? My X father-in-law wanted to be propped up in a lawn chair clutching a can of beer, with a motion detected recording oh him welcoming everyone to his funeral. Sadly, his final wishes weren’t honored.
Dan, thanks for reading and sharing. That’s a funeral I would like to have attended.
Rick, my daughter has been immersed in studies of Nordic sagas lately. She’s gonna love this article.
End of life plans are such a great gift. When my father died, I pulled out the paper he had given me describing the details of his funeral, down to the person he wanted to sing a solo song. She had died before him, but we worked out a replacement with his pastor. I review my mother’s funeral with her about once a year.
I’m visiting my mother next week, and will accompany her to visit the graves of my father and niece. Last weekend, I attended a family reunion, and revisited the graves of my grandparents and other family and ancestors.
Beowulf’s bones were gathered up from the pyre and placed in a barrow. Maybe that could be a compromise for your wishes? You could have your fire and future visits, too. I wonder about the legality of that?
Edmund, thanks for reading and sharing. It sounds like you have great respect for your family and their traditions, and great open communication with your parents.
I like you Beowulf reference. My grandsons love digging big holes on the beach. That might work ….
Good reminders since we are all going to go.
Nick, thanks for reading and commenting.