Dealing With Death
No, not the idea, but the actual event.
Two stories ran recently about dealing with the parts of us left behind after death.
First a story about a “better” coffin that screws into the ground. Okay, I’ll grant you, this is less serious than morbidly amusing to me. Still, I do like the idea of having a low-cost disposal method for what I’ll leave behind once I “shuffle off this mortal coil”. That it screws into the ground, just tickled me.
And, for anyone keeping track, I’d just as soon be cremated and scattered to the Four Winds where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan just outside the Loop. Seriously.
The second two were a little more serious. Two stories about social media applications dealing with the accounts of the dead and, more recently, one from the New York Times Magazine, online, of course.
Back before everyone was on the web all the time, I used to have an envelope that was labeled “Open upon my death or disappearance”. Seriously! I used to keep it tucked under my keyboard. I had one at work, too, for those folks, though that was in a safe. In each envelope was a series of usernames and passwords for people to use to get access to my accounts should I go missing, or should something happen to me that left me incapacitated or dead. I’m honestly not sure if anyone knew about the one under my keyboard, but I figured it would have turned up when someone cleaned up after me. So, basically, I was giving someone who survived me access to my e-mail and other, similar accounts.
I got rid of that sometime shortly before the divorce, for some obvious reasons.
Now, though, there are so many accounts and websites and blogs and such that I’m not sure I could easily list them all. And, frankly, who would bother to pay for my website? Who would care enough to maintain an archive of this blog, for instance? I don’t have a huge readership, though you are a pretty loyal lot, so I don’t expect anyone to really want to preserve what I have here.
How many of you have though about what will happen to your blogs and websites and so on when you die? What about if you were to die suddenly from, oh, say, cancer? What then? If I went missing for a month, would anyone notice here?
Well, for WordPress blogs, there’s a plugin called Next Of Kin that might help, a little. You can set it to post some message to your blog if you fail to login to your blog for a set amount of time. And, just to be sure, it will send you a reminder or warning e-mail to check and make sure that you haven’t just forgotten to visit your blog. It’s far from enough to take care of all of your digital needs after death, but it is a pretty good start!
So, what have you all got setup in case of your untimely death? Does anyone know your passwords? Have you given anyone instructions on what to post to Facebook or Twitter after you’ve gone?
Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Contrary to popular belief, UNIX is user friendly. It just happens to be selective about who it makes friends with."
--Dave Parnas
