You know after you go through something extremely difficult, years later you’re like, “how in the actual heck did I do that?” Shivers, right? Like when you muddle through a tough technology situation and you finally hunt, panic-peck and tap your way to success and then the next month you can’t for the life remember how you got yourself through it all to replicate your solution? Or how you go to the DMV and struggle through having some important document changed and then the whole proper process just disappears from your memory banks and you can’t even help someone else through the first steps — because the whole experience has literally LEFT YOUR BRAIN?? That’s how it is with all the post-death red tape and hoops and impossible processes associated.

I am reading the book, Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End, by trending death doula Alua Arthur. In it, Arthur describes the “maze of paperwork” her brother-in-law’s death triggered and how a few “to-do” sticky notes ballooned to thick covering of things to do to close up his estate.

“If I, the valiant juris-Doctor-carrying sister-in-law, couldn’t make sense of the myriad things to do to wrap up my brother-in-law’s affairs, how could my heavily grieving sister? How could people who don’t have any support at all?” she writes in the chapter on her sister’s husband, Peter.

It brought back that shivery feeling of trying to conjure up the answers to an exam I’d pulled an all-nighter cramming for. The horror of forgetting rattles to the core, and Arthur’s book sent my mind spinning to recollect how I had handled post-death “stuff” with the loved ones in my life. I thought about those days following my dad’s death and all the fears we faced. The photo above is an actual photo of what it looked like to sit in his quiet apartment and ruminate about it all. Yet, I can hardly remember the particulars.

Turns out, I couldn’t remember details for a very good reason — I had never really navigated it to begin with. I’ve had a front row seat to it all, and certainly helped from the sidelines and had been tasked with key projects, but I was never “that person” when it came to directing the after-life insanity. My brother was the executor when my father died in 2021 (bless him) and my dad managed it all when my mom died 30 years beforehand. In the remote caregiving management I provided for some seniors several years ago, I was able to loosen myself and back away from the situation when the mother finally passed away. So, thankfully or not depending on how you look at it, I couldn’t remember how to handle all the red tape because I’d never had to do it.

Which made me shivery and even MORE nervous. Shouldn’t I know this? Shouldn’t I be able to speak on it with authority if it is the sole focus, purpose and obsession of my work in this era? Shouldn’t I be an expert-level geri-mitigator on such important topics? I started pitting.

Then I started panic-Googling to find some answers so I would not appear brain-fogged if engaged on the subject. Here’s what I found:

This article from AARP includes a very helpful list

This piece from Fidelity also is excellent

And this post from the Center for Elder Law and Justice includes some great insight on what to do when your spouse dies

This research helped me calm my bod enough to remember a big takeaway from my dad’s death experience. The funeral home or service you use can direct you expertly through all the next steps and tell you exactly what to do in the wake of a loved one’s passing. So don’t freak out like I did! These professional, compassionate people are after-life experts, you can lean on them. Our funeral home point of contact led us through every single little detail, including how many death certificates we’d need to order and what companies, services and institutions we’d need to contact and how and when and why. They helped with obituary placement and connecting with the church and cemetery and all the things. ALL the things. This important relationship can really set you up for success.

The biggest thing to remember is you are not the first person to face the post-death red tape and all its madness. Literally every human being on this planet will face it, and one day cause it! The best we can all do is read up on it, prepare for it and fumble through it like everyone else when the time comes. The “after” life and its red tape suck! But woop, there it is.