Why we created this
Our planning guide was born from a combination of career and life experiences.
My husband Mark and I spent more than twenty years writing for funeral and preplanning professionals, and we heard the same stories again and again. Families were searching for answers during the hardest time of their lives. They were asking, "Where's his insurance policy? His passwords? What would he have wanted?" That's what led us to design our original guide in 2005.
Fast forward to 2025. Mark became seriously ill and had to be hospitalized in the ICU. I thought we were prepared. I knew where some important papers were located and I had given Mark a password book. My heart sank when I found out he had only written down two of the many passwords he used every week: the router and the Wi-Fi.
As Mark's time in the hospital continued, I remembered that several days before, he had mentioned a MyChart alert that didn't look right. That's the exact moment I realized this wasn't only an after-loss problem. It was a right-now problem. A sitting-in-a-hospital-chair-at-two-in-the-morning problem.
I had no access to his MyChart, his phone, or our family photos and videos. I was devastated. It took a lot of time, effort, and a little luck to eventually get into the accounts that held priceless information and memories.
Sadly, I lost Mark that same year. He never left the hospital.
When I went back to the office, I knew one of the first things I had to do was go through every page of this guide. I now understood what needed to be added because I had lived it.
At Sharishments, we hope what I learned can help other families avoid some of the upset and uncertainty we faced.
