Farewell Planning With Love: Protecting Those We Leave Behind

By Linda McDonald

Farewell Planning with Love is an easy-to-follow prescription on the subject of final wishes. This publication covers essential education and preparation to understanding everything you need to know to make your final wishes known to those you love, helping them make final decisions at a time filled with pain and sorrow.

Linda wrote Farewell Planning with Love- Protecting Those We Leave Behind to provide a frankly captivating, easy-to-understand set of guidelines and definitions for virtually everything related to end-of-life planning- from funeral and cemetery arrangements to an extensive library of informational templates to be completed in advance of death which makes this book so unique. Not only do you learn in detail everything you need to know about planning your last wishes, but the workbook section allows you to fill in the blanks on the sections that pertain to your specific needs.

Be sure to let someone know where your book of final wishes is. Make sure not to keep it in a safe deposit box or it may not be found in a timely manner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662445026

Book preview

Chapter 1

Your Final Gift

A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry. It gives a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly.

—Desmond Tutu

None of us like to consider our deaths. It’s why too many people put off the important discussions they need to have with their families—or even avoid considering exactly what their final wishes would be.

However, spending just a small amount of time to plan for your incapacitation or death and making those wishes clear will ensure that your demise does not leave your family and beneficiaries in disarray. If Henrietta, your first wife and mother of your firstborn, expects to share the turf in the family plot, but Hilary, your fourth trophy wife, has staked out the territory, your children and family will have to take sides; and heaven forbid if you end up with the wrong wife.

By ensuring that your family knows where to find your instructions, they are saved from any guesses and breaches that can arise in families if they disagree. And with all the major decisions to be made at that time adding to the stress, disagreements happen. They don’t have to when you’ve already made the decisions for them. Funding your arrangements prior to death removes financial concerns and responsibility from your family.

Did you know that within two to three days of a death, loved ones are suddenly faced with making over fifty decisions? And for many people, especially our children, the decisions are totally new to them. They have no knowledge or experience in choosing caskets or a cremation, planning a memorial ceremony, and choosing a plot, an urn, or a headstone.

The choices can be expensive, and chances are, in their bereavement, loved ones are not thinking straight, and it’s easy for them to be taken advantage of or to make choices that you would not have wanted.

Your gift of knowledge and planning provides peace of mind. It ensures that every detail is arranged according to your wishes. Your family has a written record of your personal wishes. And planning can ensure that they are not saddled with financial burdens after your death.

The problem of procrastination

Astonishing as it may seem, 65 percent of people do not plan for their final expenses. Be one of the 35 percent who make their wishes known.

We plan more for vacations than final expenses.

Procrastination stops here

Now is the time to make your arrangements. This book is a step in the right direction and includes the tools you need to ensure that your beneficiaries know your wishes and will have the funds to fulfill your funeral plans. This section 1 provides background information on planning. Follow through with section 2 where you can simply fill in the step-by-step planner with your specific requests. Consider your wishes and those of your family in filling it out. By the way, you don’t have to fill out every line, only those which apply to your