By Elisa Novick
When I left my home for Asia in September, my partner and I prepared our wills. We’d talked of it for years, but now I was leaving and he was undergoing chemotherapy. It was an intense process, done so quickly that I signed my will at our local food coop two hours before I left for the airport.
I had none of the usual seemingly obligatory participants — by which I mean family — to draw upon for executorship, power of attorney, healthcare proxy, or for inheriting whatever I might leave behind when I transition from this life. Of my closest circle of people I could entrust with these roles, two had cancer, so there was the possibility I would survive them.
They might not be able to carry out their duties or inherit anything and one or both might not be there when I return from my travels, if indeed I do return. For my partner, the frank talk of all of the possibilities involved in who might outlive whom and whether we would be together physically again in this life was a difficult subject to discuss for any length of time. There were other complicating factors as well.
There were three things driving me to be honest and open in this process, while attempting to be gentle with the feelings of all involved. One is that I am generally comfortable with death, since I work with people in a framework that includes an incarnational succession from one existence to another.
Two, because my ministry sometimes entails meeting with or working with people after they have died. (Most people are available for about three weeks before going on to where I can’t reach them directly, but some are available longer for various reasons.) So I don’t see any finality of the consciousness or of the relationship.