What Your 78-Year-Old Mother Knows About Dying That You Don't

While you're panicking about estate plans and DNRs, the generation ahead of us is thinking about legacy, autonomy, and who gets the good silver.

At seventy-eight, my friend’s mother started labeling her furniture with blue painter’s tape. She didn't do this out of cognitive decline; she did it because she wanted to make sure her granddaughter got the walnut writing desk before the cousins could fight over it. To her forty-something daughter, this looked like a morbid obsession with the end, but to her mother, it was simply practical housecleaning before the ultimate trip.

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