While engaged in activities together—looking through catalogues and travel magazines or scrapbooks and photo albums and talking about memories with your terminally ill loved one, or while listening to music together or working on a simple puzzle together or enjoying a coin collection, or painting with watercolors, or baking, (or other activities)—you can feel out the mood and address specific topics over time…when it feels right:

Are there any members of the family you have not seen for a prolonged period who you want to see [before death]?

Are there any members of the family you have not talked to for a prolonged period who you want to talk to [before death]?

Are there any members of the family whose relationship with you is troublesome? If so, why is it troublesome and do you want it to be different? If so, would you mind if I made some efforts to reconcile the trouble?

Do you want to name a specific person to make decisions for you if and when you lose the ability to make decisions for yourself?

How do you feel about your religious affiliation? Would you like to communicate with a priest or minister or rabbi?

Do you have a will? Do you have any desired changes?

Are there any personal assets that would be better distributed as gifts before death to avoid delayed use during probate?

Are you worried about the availability of sufficient finances to cover family needs in the first few months of probate? If so, can something be done to transfer funds in such a way as to make them more readily available to the family until the probate is completed?

Do you have insurance that is unknown to the family?

Do you have a living will?

Do you want to be kept alive as long as possible using modern technology or do you want to be allowed to die if the disease causes you to lose the ability to think and make personal decisions?

Do you want to be given nutrition and hydration through a feeding tube in order to prolong your life?

Would you want to be an anatomical donor of body organs if the nature of the disease permits it?

What religious or other memorial service do you desire? Is there anyone in particular you would like to have speak at a funeral or memorial service?

How do you want to be remembered in an obituary, a eulogy, etc.? And, how would you prefer those left behind handle the mourning period?

…

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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