The time before and immediately following death is often highly emotional. It is perhaps the worst time to have to make literal life and death decisions and to handle administrative tasks and finances. By facing your mortality in advance and creating the recommended documents, much of this burden can be shifted from the highly emotional times surrounding death to the present.

Words have power. We are collectively afraid of even saying words such as “death” or “die” or “dead.”

Changing how we talk about death is often the first step in changing our relationship with death. These are four primary reasons it is important to talk openly about death.