Last Wishes
I'm a relatively healthy woman of 45 (I know, I don't look it, shhhh), I don't expect to die anytime soon, at least not from natural causes.
Thing is, these days there are plenty of unnatural causes out there. Bush'n'Blair's unrelenting campaign to stamp out anybody who disagrees with their fundamentalist Christian views of how the world should be run means that just using public transport can be dangerous.
You could go into hospital to have your tonsils out and catch one of the "superbugs" and be shuffling off your mortal coil before you know where you are.
You could just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Perhaps I am a bit odd, but I've never really feared death, and since becoming Buddhist I am totally at peace with the idea that this body is just a suit that will eventually wear out, to be replaced with a new one sometime in the future. Basically dying is as much a part of living as being born.
One thing that does concern me tho, is making sure that the people I care about are informed of my demise, and that anything I want them to have gets to them.
I have a very basic will that leaves everything to my dad, but the reality is he's not gonna be interested in my collection of designer handbags, but my mate Tracy would love them I know. Its not really something you wanna go into detail with when talking to a high priced lawyer who's charging by the hour.
Then there's the palaver of letting everyone know you're no longer around. In the olden days everyone lived close by their friends and family, so a death notice in the local paper did that job adequately.
I dunno about you, but I have pals all over the world, and I'd want them all to know. My dad is 80 years old and to be really honest he'd have no idea where to begin when it comes to informing people.
Yes he could go through my address book, but the reality is that is woefully out of date, most of my phone numbers are in my mobile and nowhere else.
Then there are the people who's numbers are not even in my phone, people around the world I communicate with only by email. Now my dad has trouble working his dvd player, expecting him to switch my computer on and know where to look to find my friends email addresses is a total waste of time.
Now obviously, if I were to contract a terminal illness, hopefully I'd have time to put all my affairs in order, like my mum did when she was diagnosed with cancer. She made the gifts of personal effects before she died, everyone who knew her, knew she was ill.
But what if I was out of town doing a gig, and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Hell you can't even have a McDonalds without risking your life in some parts of the country!
As a single woman, I sometimes go a couple of days without speaking to anyone on the phone or in person. If I were to die suddenly, it could be a while before anyone knew I'd gone, let alone mates in Australia finding out.
This was all brought home to me last week after my six day jaunt around the country. I went online when I got home and my pal Mat who designed my website, admitted he was worried about me. He'd no idea I would be gone that long, and he'd thought "What if something bad happened to her, I'd never know?". Mat and I have been mates for two years but never even spoken on the phone let alone met, so nobody would even really know about him, let alone know how to contact him.
We chatted back and forth and he came up with the idea of a website, kinda like MySpace, where you could securely list the email addresses and phone numbers of all your friends, as well as providing a list of who you want your copy of FIFA 2006 to go to.
Now he's the technical whizz here, and his company Yadabyte, are one of the most exciting web design companies I've seen which is why I chose him to do my website, so he's now working on the finer points of the site.
He expects it to be up and running within a month, but in the meantime there's a homepage you can register on right now. You leave an email address and will be contacted when the site is up and running.
It might seem a bit macarbe, but to me its just a way of making things easier for the ones left behind.
Check it out www.thingstodoifidie.com
Thing is, these days there are plenty of unnatural causes out there. Bush'n'Blair's unrelenting campaign to stamp out anybody who disagrees with their fundamentalist Christian views of how the world should be run means that just using public transport can be dangerous.
You could go into hospital to have your tonsils out and catch one of the "superbugs" and be shuffling off your mortal coil before you know where you are.
You could just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Perhaps I am a bit odd, but I've never really feared death, and since becoming Buddhist I am totally at peace with the idea that this body is just a suit that will eventually wear out, to be replaced with a new one sometime in the future. Basically dying is as much a part of living as being born.
One thing that does concern me tho, is making sure that the people I care about are informed of my demise, and that anything I want them to have gets to them.
I have a very basic will that leaves everything to my dad, but the reality is he's not gonna be interested in my collection of designer handbags, but my mate Tracy would love them I know. Its not really something you wanna go into detail with when talking to a high priced lawyer who's charging by the hour.
Then there's the palaver of letting everyone know you're no longer around. In the olden days everyone lived close by their friends and family, so a death notice in the local paper did that job adequately.
I dunno about you, but I have pals all over the world, and I'd want them all to know. My dad is 80 years old and to be really honest he'd have no idea where to begin when it comes to informing people.
Yes he could go through my address book, but the reality is that is woefully out of date, most of my phone numbers are in my mobile and nowhere else.
Then there are the people who's numbers are not even in my phone, people around the world I communicate with only by email. Now my dad has trouble working his dvd player, expecting him to switch my computer on and know where to look to find my friends email addresses is a total waste of time.
Now obviously, if I were to contract a terminal illness, hopefully I'd have time to put all my affairs in order, like my mum did when she was diagnosed with cancer. She made the gifts of personal effects before she died, everyone who knew her, knew she was ill.
But what if I was out of town doing a gig, and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Hell you can't even have a McDonalds without risking your life in some parts of the country!
As a single woman, I sometimes go a couple of days without speaking to anyone on the phone or in person. If I were to die suddenly, it could be a while before anyone knew I'd gone, let alone mates in Australia finding out.
This was all brought home to me last week after my six day jaunt around the country. I went online when I got home and my pal Mat who designed my website, admitted he was worried about me. He'd no idea I would be gone that long, and he'd thought "What if something bad happened to her, I'd never know?". Mat and I have been mates for two years but never even spoken on the phone let alone met, so nobody would even really know about him, let alone know how to contact him.
We chatted back and forth and he came up with the idea of a website, kinda like MySpace, where you could securely list the email addresses and phone numbers of all your friends, as well as providing a list of who you want your copy of FIFA 2006 to go to.
Now he's the technical whizz here, and his company Yadabyte, are one of the most exciting web design companies I've seen which is why I chose him to do my website, so he's now working on the finer points of the site.
He expects it to be up and running within a month, but in the meantime there's a homepage you can register on right now. You leave an email address and will be contacted when the site is up and running.
It might seem a bit macarbe, but to me its just a way of making things easier for the ones left behind.
Check it out www.thingstodoifidie.com
posted by JoJo Smith at Monday, October 02, 2006
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