A short YouTube monologue by Sandi L Boucher reflecting on grief, cultural responses to death, and practical preparation for the next generation. She describes keeping a 'death binder'—a centralized file with contacts, financial instructions, passwords, and letters—to make bereavement logistics easier for her children, and relates personal stories about her mother and a daughter lost to SIDS to illustrate the emotional importance of clear end-of-life planning.
Chapters
Foreign. We're going to go off on a tangent here for a sec and hopefully this doesn't alarm too many people. It is not anything that upsets me. Hopefully it doesn't upset you. I had mentioned previously in a video that I had a chance to attend the on call worker training with Ashkee Winjak and Nan. And it's something I do twice a year. I get to emcee the event and I meet the most amazing people, get to sit in on them, most amazing seminars. I just love my job. And I was in a grief workshop and different cultures handle grief differently and my heart always goes out to the cultures that don't discuss it. Because if you don't cry, if you don't express your pain, there can't be healing. You're just holding it in and your body has to put out that energy to hold it in. And that's exhausting. It takes away from energy you need for other things. So we were sharing different ways that we prepare the next generation for death. Is. Is our families. Is that a discussion we have or we never talk about it? We all know it's inevitable, but it's not something we share or we do share about it. And I kind of laughed and just blurted out, I have a death binder. And everyone kind of turned and the instructor looked at me and said, okay, this sounds interesting. What are you talking about? And that's what we call it. It's a death binder. It's literally sitting on the shelf next to me. My kids know if anything happens to me, find the death binder. There is contact information in there, people they should contact. My financial advisor because she knows about my different coverage, life insurance and my investments and all that stuff. There's a letter in there for them. Okay, maybe. I hope they don't watch this video. I'm not sure they knew about that part. I've now realized I want to do something extra in the binder. But passwords are in the binder. You know, things they would have to shut down, things they need to know about. I have a deal worked out with my webmasters on what would happen to my websites if everything happens to me. It. I've lost my parents. I know when I lost my mom. I know that overwhelming grief. I know the comfort that comes from knowing that you're doing what your loved one wanted you to do. So I wanted to take. I wanted to give them as much comfort as I could in a time that I know is going to be hard for them. So by putting it all Together. They don't have to search. They don't have to wonder. They don't have to, you know, try to think in a time when thinking is next to impossible. It's in the death binder. They both know about the death binder. We joke around about the death binder every now and then. Every now and then I share something and they will say to me, put it in the death binder. So I remember, right? It just. They don't have to remember all that stuff. It's all in one place and all they have to do is find it. And I can't help thinking in a slightly different way. I'm repeating what my mom did, because my mom didn't have a will, and I had a really good idea of what she wanted, but I wasn't positive. And me and my children were the ones that were tasked with packing up her apartment. And yes, it was hard, and yes, there was a lot of tears, but there was a lot of laughter, too, when we found the box of my mom's batteries and another box of safety bins. No, my mom liked to prepare for lean times, but that's packing a really heavy canoe. And I was like, mom, exactly. What did you expect to happen? Of course, she wasn't there to answer me, but it felt great to talk to her again. And as we were packing up, my mom still had her bookcases, like I do. Come buy it. Naturally. And there was mom's Bible. And I started. I got excited when I saw it, like I used to always do as a child. And I explained to my kids that this was a really old binder that my dad had got from my mom. And it was so heavy and so huge, but it had the most amazing pictures. And it's such beautiful pictures, and I wanted to share that with them. So we sat on the floor and I opened up the binder and we started looking at the pictures. And right in the middle of the pictures and was a letter from my mom. She knew I would open the binder. She even. Or the binder. The Bible. And she even knew which part of the Bible I would go to. To me, that's love. I should have known her note was in the Bible, but she knew where I would go. And I got to read her words, and we were doing what she asked, and. And it was beautiful. So I have mom's Bible. I have the Bible for my eldest daughter, who I lost to Sids. And I have my death binder. And that's how people in the elder stage take care of those that come next. So how are you preparing your next generation? Don't make it all morbid, but give them what they need to go on without you, because that's just in my mind. Good parenting. I hope this video and the clips of this video help you on your journey. And I will see you next week. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
