Last wishes -a workbook for recording your funeral, memorial and other final instructions by Lucinda Page Knoz and Michael D. Knox (published by Applied Science Corporation, PO Box 16118, Tampa, FL 33687-6118, USA; for credit card orders phone 001 800 356 9315; fax 001 813 988; $17-95 incl. p&p, $5 extra for orders from outside North America). Monitored for the Institute by Roger Knights.
Last Wishes consists of a rather intimidating hundred pages of forms that a person can fill in before death, to make life easier for the survivors. The authors were motivated to complete the book by the death of a close relative and the difficulties of tracking down all the relevant documents and also having to plan the funeral without any knowledge of their relative's preferences.
There are spaces for details of one's partners, children, siblings, past jobs, honours and accomplishments; for the addresses of those to be notified, whether friends, colleagues, associations or churches; for information to be included in an obituary; for the distribution of small personal items; for special messages to family and friends; and for funeral arrangements, including preferred poetry, music, flowers, donations, pallbearers, viewing preferences, clothes for the body, disposal of remains, inscription and design for a headstone.
On the legal and financial side, there are details to fill in about Power of Attorney, the Will and Living Will, safe deposit box and key, insurance policies, bank accounts, certificates of deposit, investment accounts, stocks, bonds and mutual funds, other sources of income, major business and property holdings, and debts owed and owing.
Then there are bibliographies, addresses of useful organisations and some light-hearted quotes.
My criticism of this otherwise comprehensive book is that it tends towards the norm rather than encouraging alternatives. There is nothing about what the person might like to have in their surroundings whilst dying; nothing in the wording of the forms offering the option of funeral without funeral director; or private land burial; or trees instead of headstones; or home-made coffins; or one-flower-per-person at the funeral; or obituaries on the Internet. The examples of obituaries given are as boring as boring can be.
I think that people might get as much stimulation on many of these matters from the four-page set of forms from the Natural Death Centre (Living Will, Life Values statement, Death Plan and Advance Funeral Wishes forms) than from this monster book; and for the rest, one really only needs the list of the book's contents, as above, to be able to leave one's own personalised instructions. The more d-i-y the better.
The set of forms mentioned cost £5 by cheque or credit card from The Natural Death Centre, 6 Blackstock Mews, Blackstock Road, London N4 2BT (tel 020 7359 8391; fax 020 7354 3831; e-mail rhino@dial.pipex.com). (Order securely online.)
This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).
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