MSI Press Blog

  The Financial Aspects of Dying: Responsibilities, Expenses, and Emotional Decisions Facing the end of life brings a unique set of emotional and financial challenges. For many, managing expenses during this time can become overwhelming, as the responsibilities of ensuring comfort and care often clash with the reality of dwindling resources. The emotional weight of this period can lead to decisions that, though comforting in the moment, may not always be financially logical. Understanding the costs and responsibilities involved in this stage of life is essential for navigating it with clarity. One of the first financial responsibilities is the cost of adapting a home to accommodate the needs of a person who is ill or elderly. These adaptations can range from simple, affordable fixes—like purchasing a towel for extra grip—to more expensive, long-term investments such as a chair lift. A towel, for example, might be used cleverly to help someone pull themselves up from a seated positi...

  Carl died of cancer. That much is true, and terrible, and simple on the surface. But the story is more complex than a single disease. COVID-19 didn’t cause Carl’s cancer—but it surely made his path to diagnosis, care, and support harder. It distorted the shape of the last chapter of his life in ways that were subtle, cumulative, and unforgivable. Carl’s cancer was diagnosed late. How late, we’ll never know. But we do know this: in the early months of the pandemic, Carl’s doctor wasn’t seeing patients in person. Like many, he was doing only virtual visits. So when Carl started losing weight—quickly, inexplicably—it was easy to dismiss it as something positive. Carl himself believed it was a good thing. He looked thinner, healthier even, after years of carrying extra pounds. In a regular year, a doctor might have seen the warning signs: how the weight was distributed, how Carl moved, how he looked close up. Maybe they would have ordered tests earlier. Maybe they would have caught i...

  Looking back on Carl's cancer, our cats' cancers, and cancers among friends and family, we should have seen the signs, which would have led to better decisions and, likely, better outcomes. But they were small changes, slow changes that we got used to gradually without thinking back to what things used to be like.  One day, Carl forgot where the brake on the car was and pushed the gas pedal instead. Scary! Could happen to anyone, right? That was a few months before his late stage 4 metastatic cancer diagnosis, with hypercalcemia (which really messes up the brain). A small sign, but we missed it. His growing tendence to leave dishes to do until the next morning of plants to water the next day. Lazy, right? That started maybe a year out before the cancer diagnosis, likely about the time his organs were being attacked and overwhelming his immune system -- and likely his energy. A small sign, but we missed it. There were more. If we even noticed them, we dismissed them all as...

  We only get to die once (well, usually, NDEs aside). How we die can be just as important as how we live. I wish that thought had been top of the mind when Carl was dying; we might have done things differently. It is not, though, that we did not have examples. We did, actually. Dottie, a dear friend from Massachusetts, had been my secretary when I was in the Army and then opened her house to me and my infant son when, during my later reserve days, the barracks would not allow him in because of his severe breathing issues from which he was in danger of dying nearly every day. (He survived, grew up, and, still with some breathing issues, is living a robust life.) Through all the intervening years, even after I moved to California, Dottie stayed in touch. Then, she got terminal brain cancer. After some initial surgery (and more planned, which, she feared, she would not survive), she decided that she wanted to spend the time she had left visiting all her family, which had spread out a...