The one where I make the case for ‘Death Positivity’
Earlier this year, I stumbled across a Vox article, "Why millennials are the "death positive" generation" by Eleanor Cummings, did a double-take, and began to read. Click-bait goal achieved, Vox. I'm not a Millennial, but I'm close, and more and more of my clients are. According to the Pew Research Center, people born between 1981-1996 qualify as Millennials.
So what is going on? Society's attitude toward death and death planning is shifting. And Millennials are driving these changes. Being "death positive" is about a willingness to talk about death and start planning your final wishes decades before you need to. And it's not morbid or premature at all. Actually, it makes a lot of sense. Why?
Talking about death makes it less scary. Boom. The phrase "death positive" seems a little odd because, traditionally, death isn't a widely accepted topic of conversation. We've been taught either directly or indirectly to avoid talking about it because it's uncomfortable and frightening. This notion is changing, though. The number of young people in the United States who think they should pre-plan their funerals before they turn 40 is increasing. There are even apps and YouTube channels devoted to talking about death and death planning.
Why are the attitudes about talking about death changing? The answer is simple: it's a step toward overcoming the fear and uncertainty surrounding it. Some even say that acknowledging that life is finite allows us to appreciate the time we have more fully.
Planning for your death in your 20s and 30s allows you to have some measure of control in an inherently uncontrollable situation. It's an unavoidable fact of life that it eventually ends. While it is impossible to know the exact time or manner of a life's end ahead of time, you can make some decisions now. By voicing your wishes in your Will, Health Care Power of Attorney, and other documents, you can determine what will happen to your body after your death.
Today, there are far more choices than just cremation or burial. You can pre-select from a wide (and growing) range of possibilities, from creating diamonds with your ashes to being buried in an organic pod that provides nutrients for a tree. Planning your estate while you're in your 20s and 30s allows you the opportunity to make those decisions for yourself.
It takes pressure off of your loved ones. When a loved one dies, those left behind are faced with what feels like an endless number of decisions to make in an incredibly short amount of time. Without advance planning, friends and family must make decisions about what they think their loved one would want them to do. This chaotic, last-minute logistics sprint is added to the already overwhelming process of coping with the death of someone they cared for.
Planning for the moments after your death and incorporating your wishes into your estate plan takes this (unnecessary) pressure off of your loved ones. By making the decisions for yourself in advance, you are allowing them to deal with a difficult situation without adding any more stress.
Talking about death in a positive way goes against our society's deeply held generational ideas, and I fully embrace this disruption. Death positivity allows us to soften our fears about mortality and encourage us to live life to the fullest. Channeling death positivity into action and incorporating final wishes into an estate plan takes back some of the control we otherwise feel we have lost. And, perhaps the best reason to do it is that it allows us to make things easier for loved ones after our passing.
Ready to start your estate planning journey? Contact me.
Not quite ready to talk? Read other &Law blog posts for more estate planning information.