Sixty things your family will need to know — written down in your own hand, kept in one place they can find.
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Almost none of the difficulty families describe is caused by the death itself. It is caused by not knowing.
A man wrote to Walter about standing in his father's study at two in the morning with three of his brothers, pulling out drawers. They were not looking for money. They were looking for a piece of paper that would tell them what their father wanted — because none of them knew, and by then he could not tell them.
A woman writes about a bank that would not speak to her. A daughter writes about a house that sat empty for two years because nobody could prove anything. A widow writes that the hardest part was not the funeral at all — it was the third week, when the cards stopped coming and the paperwork started.
The details change. The cause does not. Somebody is standing in a hallway, trying to do right by a person who can no longer tell them what right would be.
Not knowing is the one part that can be fixed beforehand — quietly, by one person sitting at a table with a pen.
Not a book to read — a book to fill in. One section is about one sitting. One a week, and you're done inside two months.
What somebody will need in the first few days, when they are least able to go looking. If you fill in nothing else, fill in this.
Where the documents are. Not what they say — where they are. The section that saves families the most time.
Every account, everything that arrives, everything that quietly keeps going out after everything else has stopped.
The phone, the email, the photographs. The section that did not exist a generation ago, and is now among the hardest.
Where the water shuts off. What is borrowed. And the page of objects meant for particular people — the page that prevents the arguments.
Who to tell, who to call, who will need telling gently — and the names that would not appear on any official list.
What you would want if you could not say it — in your own words, sounding like you.
Every line of it is a decision your family will not have to make in the worst week of their lives.
"I did not know what he wanted. That was the whole of it. Everything hard that year came back to those six words."
"The bank would not speak to me. Forty-one years married, and I sat in the car park and cried over an account number."
"My mother filled a book like this in one winter. When the time came, everything was simply… there. I did not understand what she had spared us until I watched another family go through it without one."
Drawn from letters received by the channel. Details altered to protect privacy.
60 Things Your Family Will Need to Know
$34.99$19.99
Get the BookInstant digital download (PDF)Instant digital download (PDF) — read on any device, or print it out and fill it in by hand. No shipping, no waiting.
If it isn't what you hoped, write to us and we will refund you. No forms, no argument.
No — and this matters, so we say it plainly: it is a digital file (a PDF) that arrives the moment you order. You can read it on a computer, tablet or phone, or print it at home or at any print shop and fill it in by hand. Most people print it. Nothing is shipped.
No. It is a record — a place to write down what exists, where it is kept, and what you would want. Nothing in it is legally binding, and it does not replace signed documents. What it does is tell your family where everything is, which is the part they most often cannot find. There is a section in the book about the official forms, including why the ones you need are usually free from your state or health service.
If you can open an email, you can use this. The book arrives as a link; you click it, and it opens. If you get stuck, reply to your receipt and a person will help you.
No — and the book itself tells you not to. A book in a drawer is not a secure place for passwords. The book shows you what to record instead: where your password list is kept, so your family can find it without it sitting in plain sight.
It is written with older readers in mind — large print, plain words, generous space for handwriting. But many buyers are adult sons and daughters who fill it in together with a parent, one section at a time. Some say the doing of it together was worth more than the book.
Write to us and we will refund you. We would rather refund a stranger than have someone keep something that didn't help them.
They may never quite know you did it. But whatever else is difficult about that week — they will not have to guess.
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