About

No one starts out with the goal of building the most comprehensive “what to do when your father dies” checklist.

My father died in 2015. He was in his late 80s and had Parkinson’s Disease, so it was not exactly a surprise.

And yet, these situations still take you by surprise.

This project was born out of necessity.

My sister and I are organizers by nature. Suddenly we found ourselves overwhelmed with the list of:

• People to notify.
• Businesses, services, and organizations to notify.
• Accounts to close.
• Accounts and services to be changed into my mother’s name.
• Forms to submit.
• Items to dispose of.

I scoured websites for a magic list that would tell me everything we needed to take care of. Not finding it, I started piecing together a list that worked for us, including phone numbers and links. By using Google Docs, we could share the list and keep each other up-to-date on our individual assignments.

We tackled the seemingly endless list and figured that was the end of it.

For the last year of my father’s life, my mother attended a support group for caregivers of Parkinson’s patients. At her request, I created a PDF version she could share with the group. While she occasionally mentioned that she’d shared it with a friend, I didn’t think much about it over the years.

Fast forward to April 2022, when I was contacted by the Stanford Parkinson’s Community Outreach team. Having received a copy, they wanted my permission to share that PDF with various support groups under their umbrella.

Further discussions with Stanford and others convinced me this was worth upgrading and sharing in a more comprehensive format. This website is a result of those discussions.

This is an evolutionary project.

I’ll continue to revise and update. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Please get in touch with any input or comments!

About me