I often find myself boring my family and friends with tales of the dreams I had the night before. Several of us do this for one another. Perhaps we can count it as a family tradition. Mark didn’t understand this – he rarely remembered his dreams, but I can tell you that when he did… he stepped right into the tradition of boring the rest of us…

That being said, I have never, ever, ever heard my father tell me one of his dreams from the night before. I have known him all of my life and cannot recall a single dream being recounted. My mother is a prolific dreamer and actually rather entertaining in her retelling… but not my father. This was all true until last winter. One morning I was up and dressed and ready to go to a rather important event with Mom. She came into the room in her pajamas! I was surprised but then Dad joined us and share with me the dream that he had already shared with her. He dreamed that the two of us were in a fatal car accident and he was concerned about us driving in the snow.

Mom stayed in her pajamas. I changed my clothes and stayed home that day. It was not more than a day or two later that Kimberly called and said that she had seen me in her dream (we share dreams all the time) and that I had died in a car accident.

So…. I drove very carefully for a few weeks and then forgot about it until now. However, it made me think about my own death and what I had or had not done to help prepare my family for picking up the pieces that I leave behind. Having just lived through this – and still living through this – I was surprised that I have still not done things like write down my passwords and important contacts for the children to access.

Ideally this post would have been written soon after Mark’s passing. At the time I thought I needed to make a list of what to do for all of my friends, but since I still have a foggy brain, just imagine how awful it was back when I should have been sharing. Way beyond my capacity to put into words!

Let’s begin with passwords. This is a big deal! I knew the passcode to Mark’s phone and a month or two before he passed we put my Face ID on his phone as well. I knew that he kept an updated list of his passwords but it took me awhile to find it in Google Docs. It was in code but I knew the code and could decipher most of them. However – he had a new password that was needed to unlock his computer! It began with New#——– so I knew that it was “NEW” and I didn’t have any ideas what might follow. One day while I was with several of my children I posed the problem and we did our best to break the code. Suddenly Jackie just knew what it was. She just knew. I could vaguely remember Mark mentioning this to me but I would have never remembered on my own. I am sure that there was Divine help that day – but how nice if your loved ones could just have a clear list of your passwords! Mark’s passwords helped me wrap up financial situations with his work and close out other accounts. Often a code would be sent to his phone for verification at which point I could access the account and then put in my phone number and email as the primary contact.

Speaking of phones… I have papers on my desk that need to be filled out and notarized so that I can become the primary account holder for our phone carrier. I was surprised that this was going to be such a big deal but I learned that if I don’t fill this out and I later decide to change carriers – I would not be able to close this account and would continue to be charged. I am not sure how to prepare for this – can you put two people onto the account as primary? We changed carriers one month before we found his tumor but we were accustomed to surviving cancer so it wouldn’t have occurred to us to be an imminent problem.

What about other accounts? Hopefully both names appear on each account and wherever possible I would put “or” rather than “and.” Our car titles were listed as “or” except for the car I sold right after he died. For some reason my name wasn’t on the title of this car though it was the car that I drove. The DMV was great and I only needed to take a death certificate and fill out a special form. It ended up working smoothly but would have been easier to have put my name on the title before this. Don’t forget the brain fog – so many things are required of the surviving spouse but your brain will have stopped working at this point.

Living Trust – We talked about this for years and years. After his diagnosis we finally got our act together and hired a lawyer to help us create our living trust. What a relief to have that in place in the nick of time!

Life Insurance – Off the top of my head I can think of four women who are close to me and concerned because their spouse refuses to purchase life insurance, even when it is offered through their employment. I am grateful for the life insurance that we had, though it almost didn’t happen. One year before this final diagnosis Mark came up with the idea that we wouldn’t need life insurance. His reasoning was that he was confident in the success of his company and by the time he died we would have financial stability. He cancelled one policy and cut another in half. I convinced him to keep a smaller policy through work and it was my intervention that kept that half-policy alive. Whew – glad to have it but oh-how-I-wish-for those cancelled funds that we had paid into for years!

Burial? Have you talked about your wishes for your burial? You may recall that 14 months before Mark died I asked him to buy burial plots as a birthday gift. It was fun to do this together – yes, it was fun because we made it fun. More importantly, the decisions were made and we knew what we both wanted. I didn’t have to try to answer all of those questions when just trying to breathe was taking all of my energy.

Write! Write it down – write it all down or at least write something down! Mark did not write a lot, but I think he wrote a lot more than most men (or women perhaps). It is no secret that we wrote to one another and for months I could not travel anywhere without taking this little journal along with me. I enjoy Mark’s study journals and the words he wrote as he worked to overcome his weaknesses. I have his story journal which our family treasures… random stories of his life. His writings were never shared when he was alive, but when he was gone they kept me feeling alive. Don’t underestimate what your words may mean for those you leave behind. We have endless photos and even videos, but his written words are what I most treasure.

Learn skills to compensate for the loss – In the event of my demise Mark’s plan was to eat unhealthy foods so that he would die as soon as he could. He planned to live on graham crackers and peanut butter. In reality he knew how to cook but his skills were very rusty and he would need a lot of practice. He also planned to just get in the car and drive around and be sad for a year but I am guessing he would have been married by now so that someone would cook for him. My biggest concern was that he would never remember to pay the bills. For myself I have had to get acquainted with living trusts and retirement plans and life/car/home insurance and other things that he had always enjoyed enjoyed handling. I have sold cars and managed a “by owner” real estate transaction though my preference had always been to just show up and sign papers. My biggest problems have involved the lack of upper body strength and understanding anything at all mechanical. I am so grateful for sons and neighbors!

Live without regrets. Be a better person, be someone worth remembering. Do what it takes to mend relationships. Don’t procrastinate doing those things that you know you need to do. Be kind and vulnerable enough to say what should be said. Either you or your spouse will die and there will be separation. It is difficult to imagine but when it happens it is difficult to breathe, so make the most of your time together. Have conversations now – what I wouldn’t give to have a conversation with Mark – but I am glad that we walked together and traveled together and wanted to be together. It may make the separation more painful, but there are no regrets. Well, mostly no regrets so I guess you can learn from us and be better.

What should be added to this list? I want to say something about your own emotional resilience. The source of my strength is my relationship with my Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ. All relationships require commitment and effort to stay strong. This particular relationship has been strengthened considerably this past year, but I am so grateful that I worked on it all along. Starting from scratch would take effort but always be worth it!! My other source of strength has been family and friends. I am surprised at how many of my widow acquaintances are now having to figure out friendships because they had not invested in this all along. How I love my family and my friends – they are my treasures. When my most important person left they have been there for me, many of them more than a day’s drive away, yet I feel them close by! Investing in friendship? I could not have guessed their value, but in truth they are priceless!

What have I forgotten?

I am going to attach random posts that I just grabbed from an online widow-widower group. I don’t know any of these people, nor have I contributed to the group. I occasionally read some posts but at first it was so helpful to see others sharing my experiences. These posts don’t necessarily reflect my own feelings – but I thought it might be helpful for the reader to be aware of what those around them may be experiencing and for what they may need to prepare: