How To Die Properly: The 2017 Guide to Going Out In Style.

When it comes to dying, most of us are doing it rather badly. We are in denial for the most part. Then in turns, scared and awkward, depending on if it’s us, or someone else, who is doing the dying. And oddly also woefully unprepared, especially bearing in mind, it’s an actual given. We legit have a whole lifetime to give it some thought, and yet most of us barely give it the one.

This is crap for two reasons.

1. We are missing out on ensuring we get a rollicking good send off.
2. It’s rotten bad luck for the poor loved ones left to pick up the pieces. Who are left trying to guess passwords and answer complicated questions about cremations and caskets and donating organs. Not to mention all the grieving and casserole management required. All the fielding of good will, from people who are feeling as uncomfortable in the face of death as you are.

But this is 2017 and I am pretty confident that we can do better. So, for those of you still lucky enough to be alive, here is my suggested 3 Step Guide to Dying Properly.

Step 1: Boring but Important.

Get the ikky stuff out the way first. Make a Will/Living Trust (who gets what when I die?). Choose a Power of Attorney (who will make financial decisions on my behalf if I can’t?). Pick a Legal Guardian (if my children are minors who will take care of them?). Make a Living Will/Advance Directive (end-of-life medical choices about resuscitation and when machines should stay on/be turned off). Decide if you want to be an Organ Donor (highly recommended) and then Create a File of all the important stuff (paperwork& passwords) and tell your loved ones where to find it. Sorted.

Step 2: I wouldn’t be seen Dead in that – Plan Your Leaving Party.

Funeral planning has never been considered, even vaguely, synonymous with style. For years and years, it was little more than a question of cost, or a preference for one wood varietal over another; ‘Could I tempt Madam to consider Mahogany? Or are you all set on the Maple?’ Caskets were standard procedure, but if she were cremated, Grandma would most likely be kept on the mantelpiece in an urn that stated the absolute obvious.

Fast forward to 2017 and death is no longer being held hostage by tradition. Designing your own funeral is now officially a ‘thing’ and the options available ever more diverse. For those of you who can resist the urge to enter the hereafter in a casket shaped in to something witty and amusing, like a bag of golf clubs or an iphone7, there are thankfully, a range of stylish solutions to ensure you receive the sophisticated send-off you deserve.

So, don’t leave all the big decisions to your blubbing relatives. Do you want to be buried? Or cremated? Laid to rest in one of the stylish, Danish designed Diamant Series of coffins? Or have your ashes kept as a keepsake in a piece of cremation jewellery? Save your dosh and pick one up from Costco – shame to waste something fancy on an unresponsive audience? If graveyards give you the creeps, you may prefer a Green Funeral. Skip the embalming (toxic), don’t bother with the casket (wasteful) and return peacefully to nature, as maybe we have always been intended. And don’t panic about having nothing to wear – there is a budding industry now specialising in, I-kid-you-not – ‘Mort Couture’. Think soft French silks and black Victorian cotton shrouds, designed under the premise that we all deserve to “Look beautiful in the last thing you’ll ever wear!™”

The good news is, once you have sorted the basics, death doesn’t even have to be part of the proceedings. ‘Celebrations of Life’ are replacing the dour formality of days gone by and what better gift can you offer your loved ones than a pre-planned and pre-paid for final farewell. Think of it as planning the ultimate party. Music? Speeches? Dancing? Dress code? Anything goes. You can hire an expert or just write it all down and let your loved ones know that when the time comes, it has all been S-O-R-T-E-D.

• Step 3: No Regrets.

This step is easy but many of us leave it too late. Don’t be an idiot – tell the people you love, that you do. Show the people who matter, how much. Stop waiting until ‘One Day’. Stop complaining about the small stuff and for heaven’s sake, (quite literally), start living each day like it’s your last.

Because, damn straight, one day it will be.

This GET HEALTHIER post is brought to you by someone who knows that to be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid.

Photo Credit: Death at a Funeral Publicity Photo.