I think it’s time. There’s been something I’ve been putting off for years now, afraid to face my own mortality, but sometimes there are events that just really put it into perspective. I know it’s quite dark to talk about, particularly at midday on a Monday, but it’s really shaken me to my core and I’m quite unable to stop talking about it. Over the weekend, a boy I went to school with was in a car crash and didn’t make it through. Obviously, high school was many years ago now, but a freak event like that, something that came out of nowhere and ended his life in the blink of an eye really makes you reassess what matters. It has forced me to look rationally at my own death and confront decisions I have been avoiding for a long time now. Namely, the setting out of my will in Melbourne.
Even the simple act of making an appointment with your lawyer with the intention of discussing your will is a daunting task. I should know, I’ve been finding excuses to put it off for years. I watched a documentary once that attempted to explain why, that we as humans simply can’t imagine the world without us. That our brains aren’t actually of possible of percieveing their own non-existence. Trying to counter that force by actively thinking about estate planning, Melbourne funeral arrangements, where your various assets should go, what you would want your wishes to be … it’s simply a lot to deal with, and we instinctively recoil from working through the logistics of it. In practice, that means that a lot of the time people don’t adequately plan for their deaths and their wishes are never carried out by families who hazard their best guess at what those wishes would be. I would never want to put that kind of pressure on my family, which is precisely why I have to do this.
