What You Want to Happen After You Die
This is one of the most personal decisions you will make — and one of the first your family will face after your death. Making this choice in advance prevents confusion, conflict, and costly decisions made under pressure.
Burial
Traditional earth burial in a cemetery. Consider whether you want a specific cemetery, a family plot, a particular casket, or a vault. Religious traditions may have specific requirements about preparation, timing, and burial practices.
Cremation
Increasingly common and generally less expensive than burial. Specify what you want done with your ashes: scattered in a meaningful place, kept by family, divided among loved ones, or placed in a columbarium.
Green or Natural Burial
Burial without embalming, in a biodegradable shroud or simple container, in a natural setting. A growing option for those who want their death to have minimal environmental impact. Requires advance research into available sites.
Body Donation
Donating your body to a medical school or research institution. This must be arranged in advance with the receiving institution. After study, remains are typically cremated and returned to the family.
Organ donation is separate from body disposition. You can choose burial or cremation and still be an organ donor. Register your decision, tell your proxy and family, and know that donation does not delay funeral arrangements or alter the appearance of the body.
Make It Official
Register through your state's donor registry and indicate your wishes on your driver's license. Verbal agreements are not enough — your family may override them without written documentation.
Tell Your People
Your proxy, your family, and your physician should all know your donation wishes. In the critical hours after death, there is no time for research or debate. Clarity saves lives — literally.
A funeral or memorial is not just about honoring the dead — it is a critical passage for the living. Your wishes here can relieve your family of agonizing decisions and give them permission to grieve rather than plan.
What Kind of Gathering
Religious or secular? Somber or celebratory? A traditional funeral with a viewing, or a simple memorial weeks later? A party, a prayer service, a scattering ceremony on a mountaintop? Say what you want — or say you do not care. Either answer helps.
Where It Should Happen
A house of worship, a funeral home, a park, your own backyard, or no gathering at all. If you have a strong preference, name it. If the location matters less than the spirit of the event, say that instead.
Who Should Be Involved
Name specific people you want to speak, read, sing, or officiate. If there are people you want excluded, say so. If you want the gathering open to all, or kept intimate, make that clear.
Music, Readings, and Rituals
Specific hymns, poems, or songs. Scripture passages or secular readings. Military honors, fraternal rituals, cultural traditions. These details matter deeply to those who will carry them out — and they are impossible to guess.
In the days after a death, survivors face an overwhelming number of tasks — legal, financial, and administrative. The single greatest gift you can leave them is an organized record of where everything is and who to contact.
Financial and Legal Records
- Location of your will and the name of your attorney
- Bank accounts, investment accounts, and retirement funds
- Life insurance policies and beneficiary designations
- Property deeds, vehicle titles, and mortgage information
- Outstanding debts, loans, and recurring payments
- Tax records and the name of your accountant
Digital Life
- Email accounts and passwords (or a password manager)
- Social media accounts and your wishes for them
- Online banking and bill-pay accounts
- Cloud storage, photo libraries, and digital files
- Subscriptions and automatic payments to cancel
People to Notify
- Employer, colleagues, and professional contacts
- Friends and extended family who should be told personally
- Religious community, clubs, or organizations
- Your physician, dentist, and other care providers
- Insurance companies, Social Security, and pension administrators
Where Is Everything?
The most important document you can create for your survivors is not your will — it is a simple guide to where everything is. A binder, a file, a shared digital folder. Tell one trusted person where to find it.
Why This Matters
Families fight about funerals. Siblings stop speaking over cremation versus burial. Adult children agonize over whether their parent would have wanted a church service or a celebration of life. These conflicts are not about selfishness — they are about love expressed without information.
When you write down your after-death wishes, you do not remove grief. You remove doubt. You give your survivors permission to honor you the way you wanted — and to turn their energy from decision-making to mourning, which is the work they actually need to do.
Next Step: Finding Peace
You have documented your wishes for your body, your service, and your practical affairs. The next step explores the spiritual and emotional dimensions of preparing for your dying.
CONTINUE TO STEP 8 →