How to be Prepared for the Digital Afterlife

Ever heard of cyberthanatology? Learn how technology has reshaped end of life planning and how to save your family from digital woes when you die. Our guest Niki Weiss returns to share her knowledge to get you started.

What are Digital Afterlife Services?
Digital technologies are reshaping the interactions between the living and the dead. As a result, a new concept is evolving called “digital afterlife services” and these services assist people in organizing their digital property and determining what happens to it after death.

This week we interviewed Niki Weiss who is a digital tech thought leader and founder of My Final Playbook Systems. Learn some of the things to think about in your estate planning.

In this Episode:

• 03:47 - Ancient Greek Funeral Traditions
• 06:31 - Recipe of the Week: Koliva
• 07:58 - Digital Afterlife Services
• 12:01 - My Final Playbook - Guest Niki Weiss
• 46:56 - Outro

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4fCcQ2t

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:47 Ancient Greek Funeral Traditions
• 6:31 Recipe of the Week: Koliva
• 7:58 Digital Afterlife Services
• 12:01 Guest Niki Weiss on Digital Afterlife Planning
• 46:56 Outro

Transcript

How-to-be-Prepared-for-the-Digital-Afterlife

This podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies, the podcast where we talk about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement.

I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 46 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We are both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions in the middle of a crisis.

So, welcome to this week's show. Please relax, get yourself something comforting, a long, cool drink, and maybe some strawberry pie. And thank you for spending the next hour with Charlie and me as we continue our series about death in a digital age.

Like the BBC, we see our show as offering entertainment, enlightenment, and education, and divide that into three halves to address each of these goals. Our main topic is in the second half, so feel free to fast forward to that yackety-yack free section if you need to. In the first half, Charlie talks about the death and burial in ancient Greece, and has a traditional Greek funeral food as our recipe of the week.

In the second and third half, I'm going to talk about death in the digital age with our guest, Nikki Weiss, who is the CEO and founder of The Final Playbook. It used to be, as Buzz Lightyear said, that we would go to infinity and beyond, but in the digital age, we can go to death and beyond. So, Charles, how are you? Death and beyond.

Seriously, we can literally, in the digital world, never die. Oh, right. Yes.

Our podcast will be available forever. You know, I thought I heard it somewhere, and I didn't... Okay, yes, yes, that's where I heard it, from you, a few minutes ago. Thank you.

So, where should we begin? Yes, what? Well, speaking of infinity, we could go all the way back to the Greeks. There is, you know, as all the telescopes taking these magnificent pictures of other galaxies, you know, there's one thinking that maybe it's not just that, you know, stars and galaxies and planets and the junk that we keep putting into space just keeps going and going, but at some point it comes back around. Of course, that would take billions and billions of years, but you know, just that idea, it expands, but at some point, it might actually come back around.

Isn't that an episode of a Star Trek movie? I'm sure it was. If not, it should be. Yes, it should.

I'm going to write to Gene Roddenberry. No, he's dead. But, you know, nothing dies, so you could still write to him.

Yes, nothing dies, but let's please remember, everyone dies. Catchy title. It is a catchy title.

I know. So, folks, in our first half, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a collection of funeral art that you can visit in person or online. The link is in the show notes.

The ancient Greek conception of the afterlife and the ceremonies associated with burial were well established by the 6th century BC. In the Odyssey, Homer describes the underworld, deep beneath the earth, where Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, and his wife, Persephone, reigned over countless drifting crowds of shadowy figures, the shades, of all those who had died. It was not a happy place.

Indeed, the ghost of the great hero Achilles told Odysseus that he would rather be a poor serf on earth than lord of all the dead in the underworld. The Greeks believed that at the moment of death, the psyche, or spirit of the dead, left the body as a little breath or puff of wind. The deceased was then prepared for burial according to the established rituals.

Ancient literary sources emphasized the necessity of a proper burial and referred to the omission of burial rites as an insult to human dignity. Relatives of the deceased, primarily women, conducted the elaborate burial rituals that were customarily of three parts. First, the prothesis, laying out of the body, the ephphora, funeral procession, and number three, the internment of the body or cremated remains of the deceased.

After being washed and anointed with oil, the body was dressed and placed on a high bed within the house. During the prothesis, relatives and friends came to mourn and repay their respects. Lamentation of the dead is featured in Greek art when vases were decorated with scenes portraying the deceased surrounded by mourners.

Following the prothesis, the deceased was brought to the cemetery in a procession, the ephphora, which usually took place just before dawn. Very few objects were placed in the grave, but monumental earth mounds, rectangular built tombs, and elaborate marble stelae and statues were often erected to mark the grave and to ensure that the deceased would not be forgotten. Immortality lay in the continued remembrance of the dead by the living.

The women of classical Athens made regular visits to the grave with offerings that included small cakes and drinks. Koliva is a sweet wheat berry salad with nuts, seeds, pomegranate, raisins, and spices. This highly nutritious and filling salad is traditionally served after a Greek Orthodox funeral or on memorial days.

Greeks perform a ceremony, minosimo, either at the church or at the cemetery in memory of the deceased three days after, nine days after, 40 days after, three months after, six months after, and a year after the day a person dies. On those memorial days, Koliva is served. Koliva is usually decorated with cross shapes on top or with lit candles which served in the church.

Koliva decorations are made using walnuts, almonds, raisins, and icing sugar. Bon Appetit, everyone! Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe for Koliva and additional resources for this program. Your tax-deductible donations are always welcome so that we can continue to offer you quality programming.

Thank you in advance for making your donation at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one, dies.org. Marianne? Thanks, Charlie. A few weeks ago, we talked about what would likely be the causes of death in the next decade, and we have that link in the show notes. Writing that show suggested another major shift that we can see coming, and that is the increased integration of digital legacy management.

As technology continues to evolve and become more ingrained in our daily lives, the way we handle digital assets and online presence after death will undergo extensive transformation. This change will include the management of digital assets, which encompasses a wide range of items, including social media accounts, digital memories, online financial assets, cryptocurrencies, digital files, everything that holds sentimental, financial, or practical value. The concept of digital legacy encompasses all the digital information a person leaves behind after death, including social media profiles and accounts, emails, personal blogs, and other digital assets.

According to Carolyn Romano, the management of digital legacy will become a critical aspect of estate planning. Just as people prepare wills to distribute physical assets, they'll need to create digital wills to manage the online presence after death. This will include instructions on how to handle social media accounts, digital photo albums, and personal websites.

This shift will ensure that a person's digital footprint is managed according to their wishes, providing a sense of control and continuity after death. The new concept is evolving called digital afterlife services, and along with it a new field of cyber thanatology. These services assist people in organizing their digital property and determining what happens to it after death.

For example, Google and Facebook have provided choices that allow a user to select a friend to act as a legacy contact or to manage an account after the owner's death. This will include instructions on how to handle social media accounts, digital photo albums, and personal websites. Management and transfer of digital assets after death have become increasingly pertinent in estate planning.

Management and transfer of digital assets after death have become increasingly pertinent in estate planning, necessitating the inclusion of digital assets and living wills to facilitate their transfer to family members. According to White, without specific instructions in a living will, the handling of these assets can become complicated as access may be restricted due to privacy policies or terms of service agreements. Therefore, incorporating provisions for digital assets and living wills not only ensures smoother asset distribution, but also lessens potential legal and emotional challenge for surviving family members during a time of bereavement.

Managing digital legacies will become an increasingly important ethical and legal issue because digital assets are gaining more emotional and financial value. The issues of ownership and transfer of ownership after a particular person's death will rise. These are some of the issues that legislatures and policymakers are slowly recognizing, and as a result, laws and regulations concerning digital inheritance are becoming created.

The dynamic environment will call for further discussion and flexibility so that the rights and preferences of people are protected in the digital afterlife. Have you considered what will happen to your treasured digital possessions when you die? Well, for that, please listen to our interview with Nikki Wise. So, we're back this week with Nikki Wise, who's a digital legacy sanatologist and a death tech thought leader and founder of My Final Playbook Systems app.

And we talked last week about our digital presence and what happens if both our phone and ourselves die, and how do people kind of get into our stuff. And we invited Nikki to come back and kind of help us with, so what do we do with, it seems, I don't know if y'all found this to be kind of complicated, but it seems kind of complicated. You know, if I want to do a trust, I go to a lawyer.

So, if I need to handle my digital life beyond death, you know, it used to be, you know, like Buzz Lightyear would say, to infinity and beyond. And we've somehow gotten pretty quickly to death and beyond, because even though we're physically not alive, our digital footprint lives long after us. So, welcome back, Nikki Wise.

Thank you, Marianne. We had a great time the first one, so I'm looking forward to this one as well. So, Nikki, tell us what this is.

What is the final playbook system? So, my final playbook system came out of understanding that, you know, planning for this end of life is really not just about getting a will or a trust. And it's not just about setting up our bank accounts and the taxation. And we need to make decisions about long-term care.

Do we want hospice? There's just a lot of decisions that need to be made in what we call our legal, financial, physical, and digital aspects of our life. And for many people, it is overwhelming. And they just don't have... Talking to all of these professionals, and many of them are trying to upsell you or provide services or you're just terminology that you're not familiar with.

So, my final playbook system is really, it's an online educational program and coaching opportunity to help people navigate and have these conversations about death and dying. Because part of living is dying. We're all going to die.

We're going to die one of three ways, either sudden and unexpected, or we're going to get a terminal diagnosis or some sort of condition that'll shorten our lives. Or sadly, like my father-in-law, who is just 94 years old and sitting in God's waiting room in a nursing home. He can't walk.

He can't toilet himself. It's just waiting. But all of those need a plan, right? How can we set our life up so when the passing does happen, that those we leave behind are not left with the mayhem? And my final playbook system, we don't talk about grief or bereavement, although we acknowledge it.

We're sensitive to it. But we are about the business of putting a plan together so that when you do pass, that your family can be in the moment of their grief instead of having to worry about, now, where is that password to dad's phone? Because I can't get in there to get to his bank account or to pay a bill or to shut down. I mean, even just shutting down accounts.

To be able to shut down a utility account, sometimes you need that password. So my final playbook is to educate people on how to be best prepared in all four of those domains, legal, financial, physical, and digital. And you know, up until, I guess I'll go out on a limb and say up until now, you know, we've been educating people about, you know, be prepared.

Have, you know, think the tough thoughts, get your will, do your advance directive. But at no time have we said to people, and do your digital stuff. So are we out of date, or has this digital need been something that happened in the last five minutes and we didn't know about it? I would say we're moving towards that, right? So let's, if we take a step back and identify, if we just define what is digital.

So nowadays, when you get your will done, are you, is the lawyer emailing it to you and ask you to do a docusign? Well, when we did our trust, they gave us this huge binder with all the paperwork in it. And then they also sent it digitally. So we've got it like in two different ways.

When did you do that? Five years ago. Okay. That's probably the change that's happening now.

So I would also say that the change is happening is that the technology, even in the, what they call law or legal tech. So now there's emerging, there's legal tech that's happening. And a lot of the lawyers are now going to, stepping away from that hard copy binders, and they're able to use leverage technology in order to get documentation completed, drafted, and then executed.

So even, so we look at from the legal standpoint. A lot of times people don't want to go into the drive all the way into the office to meet with an estate attorney. They might be meeting via zoom or, you know, a virtual that's digital.

And then they draft and the drafts being sent back and forth. That's considered digital. So let me ask, you received a digital copy of your estate.

Where do you store your digital copy? Um, in the cloud. Right. I mean, unless you, unless you took that email that had your, your, and it has sensitive information in there.

I'm assuming it's got, you know, bank accounts, social security, like it's got sensitive information. So the fact that we don't know where our thing, where our, I call it digital sovereignty, right? So what is our digital sovereignty to be able to empower ourselves to understand who we're sharing our information with and how they share it back to us. So you have a hard copy, which is great.

And hopefully you have that in a fireproof, waterproof file cabinet somewhere in your home, in a closet in the back of your room somewhere. But that, that digital, if it's digital, then it's at risk for being hacked. Someone else to grab it and it being ending up on the dark web, unless you secure it.

And how do you secure it? One way it is, well, the fact that it went through email, I'm assuming that a lot of, again, the, the, a lot of the lawyers right now, this legal tech is very, um, up on their privacy, right? So they're very involved with the technology that's being developed for privacy. So they have encrypted and very secured email servers. If I, when I receive something from my lawyer, what I'll do is I will download it.

And then I will put that document in a hard drive and what I call an external hard drive. Now, everything I'm going to share with you today could change tomorrow. So, right.

So I would today download that digital asset and I would put it on the external hard drive, like a thumb drive or a hard drive. And then I would put that hard drive in my crucial doc box, that waterproof fireproof, um, file cabinet, file box that I have. That's one way for me to secure it.

Um, I would also, um, and then, and then delete, make sure that whatever I have is, is either deleted or I have it in another secured place. So there are, um, companies that provide very secure platforms. Like if anybody's storing anything of sensitive information on their Google drives, that's at risk, but Dropbox box, um, AWS, which is, uh, Amazon's, um, security, um, platform.

Those are very secured. Um, but I would just be very careful and mindful, right. This conversation is just to make people aware and to be mindful.

Um, or to even realize what we don't know in terms of thinking about it. The digital stuff, because you always hear, even if you delete something, it never really is deleted. It's, I don't know where it is.

It's in the cloud. It's floating around somewhere. And that's the thing that even, you know, with, with your company and the work that you're doing, it made me think about, we really don't ever die because our blogs are out there.

Our memes are out there. Everything that we do online can be found. Is that true? It can.

So if you let, uh, allow me, I'd like, I talk some about the nefarious stuff, but there is some really cool, benevolent technology that's being developed that will allow us to enhance our legacy, our digital legacy. Um, so I get super excited about that as well. So yeah, we have to be very protective and aware.

It's kind of like, you know, we, when we leave our house, we lock the doors. We make sure the windows locked. We make sure that, you know, the oven's turned off, like we do a check.

And that's what I ask people to do. Just do your basic safeguard checks of your digital assets when you are engaged with it. At the same time, if there's somebody who wants to get into your house, they will find a way into your house.

And that's just the reality of life that we live in today. Digital assets are the same way. Um, but to move through the, to talk more about this death tech and what's being, you know, being created.

Um, I know that, um, the funeral, the funeral industry is very excited about the new technology that they're starting to be able to offer their clients. Um, I mean, even during COVID. So during COVID, that's probably where the pivot took where, uh, funerals were initially being held in person on site at a funeral home.

And then we pivoted to online zooming funerals. And now we're kind of in a hybrid. Now, a lot of the funeral homes have added, um, technology cameras where people can either have that option to come in, or they can be online in order to participate in a service, a celebration of life.

And that service is now being recorded. So now that recorded, um, service from the, the decedent is now a digital asset that the family can hold on to forever. Well, go ahead.

Well, I had a friend who died and I didn't know about it. And the only way I kind of figured it out, like he would poke me every now and then, you know, like digitally, but my birthday came and went and I didn't hear from him. And I thought, how strange is that? Well, I called his office and when I called the office, they said, uh, who is this? And I thought my heart just sunk.

I was like, Oh no. Well, he had died. And they said, well, his funeral's online.

I Googled it and found it. And I went to his funeral four months after he died. So even they hold, you know, even though you can have these cyber funerals and virtual funerals, if you miss it, you can even have, you know, forever funerals, I guess.

No, that's exactly what they're creating. Now, let me take it a step further for you. They are now adding, there's technology out there where you can embed a QR code into a headstone.

So the QR code, you're in a, you're in a cemetery and you're walking by and you, the QR code, you scan the QR code. And that currently today will bring you to like a YouTube channel that might show you that montage that they showed of uncle Joe at the funeral or the actual funeral. So that exists today, but I'm going to take it a step further near future.

There's more. Oh, it's so exciting. This just gets me going.

Okay. Do you remember the scene in the first Star Wars is like one of the first scenes in Star Wars where R2-D2 pops up this holograph of Princess Leia and then Princess Leia has a message, there'll be one Kenobi. Yeah.

You imagine walking in the cemetery and hit that QR code and pops up. That person who's under, who's on, who's in that plot. And they just have a conversation with you because AI now can, you just mentioned it.

There's enough of a digital footprint out there of Nikki on this conversation is, you know, digital, my social media, all my emails that AI can scrape what we call scrape the internet and create what we call a Nikki bot. So there could be a bot that represents me, looks like me, talks like me. I'm gone.

I'm like, I've been getting, you know, gone for a while, but my responses might be intonations, how I would respond. There's enough information data out there already that they can create a conversation. So my granddaughters, they're babies now, but maybe, you know, when they're teenagers can go up to a location, wherever I might be and be able to actually have, Hey, Gema, how old were you when you made pop pop? And I would have this holograph image where I can respond to them.

I don't mean to freak you out, but I don't know. Did you think that 30 years ago we'd be walking around with cell phones? No, not at all. I mean, I can remember going to the cemetery to see my grandparents and being fascinated by the tombstones that had pictures on them.

And I would, I was a weird little girl, I guess, but I would look at those pictures and think about who were these people? Because not only was there a tombstone, but there was this picture to go with it. And I knew how old they were when they died. And I knew what it said.

And I, you know, could create this narrative in my head. But if you've got the QR code, you don't even have to like make it up for yourself. They'll, you know, can tell you about themselves themselves.

A lot of the museums are doing this technology now, right? So you walk through the Holocaust Museum or any of the museums that hold significant history and they have these interactive displays. And it's very similar to that technology. There is a company out there that I think, and the name is off, I can provide it for you later, but they actually have a list of like 1,200 questions.

And you sit there and record all of your questions. And then again, with AI technology that it can consolidate and configure all of these questions that anyone can come up and ask the question and it'll search its database and then be able to, and then I would be able to respond as though I'm responding to them personally. We did a show about that.

Yeah, we did a show about that because Ed Asner apparently did that. And at his funeral, I guess, and there was another woman too, but Ed Asner did it where, you know, so you have this holographic image and people could ask him questions and he answered them. But I don't know if I asked him.

It seems to me, you know, like if you got a question in terms of grieving in my family now, like ask me now, like don't wait till I'm dead. It's very Black Mirror. If anybody has watched the television show Black Mirror, it is very Black Mirror.

And, you know, from a sociological standpoint and psychological standpoint as well, it, you know, it really does drop into, does this help the grieving process or does this prolong the grieving process? And that I think is on the table for discussion. Well, also, you know, like at least now we can say, well, or I could say I'm here now. If there's something you want to know, I'm here now.

I'm not going to be here forever. And, you know, ask me now, talk to me now. But does that not kind of change that whole dynamic? If you can say, well, you know, I don't have time to talk to you now, but after you're dead, I'm going to have some time and I've got some questions, you know, like, does that, does that interfere with the urgency that we might feel to talk with people while they're still here? A good question.

But let me ask you, when you found out that this colleague friend of yours had passed and you had missed it four months later, how did you feel even knowing you weren't there at the moment they were having the service, but the fact that you were able to experience the service in the past, what was that like for you? There was no comfort in that. Honestly, I, in fact, what I did is I emailed his his daughter and to find out what happened and, you know, to kind of just talk with her because the funeral didn't give me the, the answer to the, what happened? Did he suffer? Was it long? Was it short? You know, I did. All it did was give me sort of this, I don't want to say superficial, but for lack of a better term, a superficial view of, you know, that public, here's, here's the end.

The synopsis. Yeah. The public synopsis.

You know, you know, they, they had pictures and stories and people talking, but that wasn't really what I was looking for. I was looking for what happened and did he suffer? And, you know, so for me now, it really, it really, it really didn't, but I could, I could see how some people would say, well, at least I was able to have that. But so your final playbook to get, you know, we've gone around the block, but let's, let's, I want to go back to what it is that, that you offer, offer people is, is it, is it like going to a lawyer to get your will or your trust? Is, is it that kind of experience or is it different? So we are the go-between the shouldering professionals of the deaf and dying industry.

So we support the legal, financial, physical, and digital professionals. When you go to a lawyer, sometimes you're just, they, they throw you a bunch of documents and say, Hey, you know, make these very serious decisions. Now with my final playbook, we, because of the financial piece to it, we actually will sit down and explore with our clients.

What is it a, that they believe in death, right? So for some people, they don't have a plan because they're, they're procrastinating. There's a level of fear, overwhelm, anxiety. So what we do is we break down building out a final playbook, the legal, financial, physical, and digital asset planning in a way that is manageable.

It's not overwhelming. It's educational. It gives them chances to decide on how they want to not just say, well, just give it all to, you know, give it all to the kids or, you know, just give it to somebody, but no, there's the life that you've built, you've spent so much time building a life.

So you should spend a fair amount of time planning what that end of life might be. Now for several of my clients, um, they are, um, I have about a handful of women, um, successful, never married, no kids. So, and a couple of them are estranged from their families.

So for them planning their, um, estate, there needs to be a fair amount of thought involved. The others that I think about are, um, blended families is also a very complicated situation that needs a lot of time to think about. So the idea is that we go through and, and the language that's used, right? So if you have a complicated situation, what does it mean to have a will or trust? Um, what are some will as a coach, I will talk people as a coach, I'll talk people through the opportunity to, what are the options? If it's a blended family and his hers and their children and the adult children, um, and you have an under a minor child, how do you navigate the estate planning in that aspect? Um, so what we do with my final playbook is we get people ready to go into well-prepared to talk to a lawyer in a state attorney or, um, an elder attorney because they're doing the estate, um, for their parents.

Uh, when we talk about life insurance, life insurance is very complicated and first some life insurance agents, you know, some of their selling practices are not very ethical. So we give the tools and the language to allow them to me able to make their decisions on their own without the influence of that professional that they might need to make a purchase from. And we do it holistically, right? So we're going to go in and build a plan for all four of the pieces.

So, because some of these pieces intersect with each other. So the financial really does intersect with the legal and now the digital is overlaying a lot of these pieces here, right? So you go into a funeral director and they're going to try and upsell you on some of their digital videography options. So there's a dollar sign attached to some of the services that are being sold to you.

If you're going in there feeling overwhelmed, afraid of talking about death, if, um, if the terminology that is just like, you don't understand what it means and they're trying to spin your head around a little bit, my final playbook allows you in a very educational, calm sort of way, get a grasp on this is what I really want. This is how I want to plan it out. And then going to the professionals and having them execute the drafting of a will, or this is the insurance policy I want, or no, I don't want, you know, I don't want a, you know, a very expensive casket.

I'd rather do a direct cremation, like to be able to understand what your options are before you actually need them. So it's sort of like the difference between having a good meal and a grocery list before going to the grocery store, as opposed to no grocery list and going starving. You know, you go in and you kind of just grab whatever you see because it's simple, it's easy, and you're really hungry and you want to get it over with as opposed to being really thoughtful and planning it out and saying, I want this, I want this.

And so my, um, the, the lawyers and the insurance professionals, the accountants, the ones that are the funeral directors, those professionals that I'm currently working with, they appreciate my service. They say, thank you, because it's allowing their customers to come in ready to make a decision because for them, it ends up being a very long sale cycle and people are very on the fence and don't know make to move. But when, after they worked with my final playbook system and the team, they go in ready to make a decision and they know what they want and they put their credit card down and it's a much, um, more efficient and effective way for them to do business.

So they appreciate it. Well, it, you know, it makes perfect sense now that, you know, now that this service is offered and people can find Nikki at finalplaybook.com and we have all of her contact information in the show notes. And to me, it makes sense that you understand what your options are.

You kind of go through it, figure it out, and then you go and pay, you know, for the very top dollar expensive lawyer time to get it all into the legalese that's needed. And you know, you, you come out with a product that reflects you and reflects your wishes and your values. A comprehensive plan and it's iterative.

I mean, and, and that's what we tell our, you know, our clients is that your, your end of life plan, it's iterative. You know, what you plan today could, will change, you know, in a, in a few years. And I know that you've spoken about how, you know, every few years you do need to be looking at your estate plan because people come and go and, you know, divorces happen and marriages happen and, you know, babies are born.

So you need to constantly be iterating that end of life plan. And that's why technology changes. You can say, well, I don't want this or I don't want that, but, you know, technology changes, something comes along and there's something new that's offered that wasn't there when you brought out your plan five years ago.

Oh my gosh. The, just in the funeral industry now, you know, do you want to become, you know, the, some of the green options are getting super interesting. I just recently consulted with a client who they had the husband's ashes, but she didn't know what to do with them.

He loved the garden and he loved to make rock statues. And there is a company out there that will take the ashes and turn it into this beautiful stone. She didn't, she didn't realize that that was an option.

Glasswork, they're, you know, taking the ashes and putting into different pieces of artwork, glass painting, jewelry. So even burial at sea, some people are becoming like coral down at the bottom of the sea. I know there's several vendors that offer that burial at sea, which is very green.

You got to write it down. You got to write it down. You got to think about it.

Well, Nikki, I so appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today and to our listeners, please check out finalplaybook.com and think about working with Nikki and getting, getting your things in order because it'll be so much better. Get it off your mind and make it easier for the people you leave behind. So thank you, Nikki.

Thank you. We just want to say a peace of mind for those you leave behind. That's our tagline.

Thank you. Oh, is it really? Yeah. Peace of mind for those you leave behind.

I just, I just said that right out of my head. So there you go. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Thank you. Um, Marianne, um, you know what I know about this digital stuff, but listening, you know, to, you know, all the information keepers, um, you know, because, you know, I often talk about, you know, having, you know, documents being prepared and all that sort of stuff. Um, you know, Marianne it's, it's, it's, I mean, this is like, you know, if somebody writes something down electronically one way, but had written something by hand and had it notarized and everything on paper, this is wow.

I, I never thought of that this much until you started saying all this. Boy, this is nuts. I mean, people can have two different wills and who's going to decide which one is which.

Well, it's decided by the date on the will. So the most recent one will always be the one that's used, but the question then becomes, for example, you know, the, if, if you, if you think about, I was thinking of Aretha Franklin, but the different dates, but, but I'm sorry. Go on.

What? Yeah. Yeah. That, that would, we need, did we ever do, we'll have to talk about that.

We ever do a show about Aretha Franklin's wills. Um, I, I brought it up briefly, but you know what, it would, it would, it would be good. We should review that because it's not only her.

I mean, I mean, Prince, um, so many big, big stars died either without a will or with multiple wills. Well, and then there's also the issue of the stuff that you, you know, put under your mattress. There's, there's that too.

But the interview with Nikki is really, I think, important to listen to. And actually after, after the interview, both David and I went in and did our legacy contacts for our phones, um, as she suggested. And we made sure that we got a fireproof waterproof box to put our stuff in.

And, um, you know, it just, it's, it's one of those things that you listen to somebody like Nikki talk and you I better do that. And for me, if I don't do things right away, I don't, I, I will for tend to forget them. So right after the interview, we both kind of sat with our phones and do that.

And I'll put the instructions about how to do your legacy contacts in the show notes so that you can just follow the instructions and it's simple to do. And it gives you a QR code that you put with all your important papers so that your legacy person can just flash that QR code and get into your phone and be able to get your passwords and all of all of your information. But, um, I mean, think of the times that, that you haven't been able to get into your phone or you drop your phone in the lake or all the different things that we do.

And you think, oh my God, I'm, I'm kind of lost without this stupid thing. Oh, right. And to your point, um, what AT&T recently it was revealed, um, all the, all that, all their information, it was only phone numbers.

I don't think it was people's names, but phone numbers, somebody, somebody hacked AT&T and all these numbers are out there. I forgot about that aspect of it too. Yeah, I think I'm going to stick to paper, but yeah, everything, the digital stuff still needs to be protected and taken care of and everything.

But, uh, just for me personally, because I like paper, um, yeah, actually just so much now. I've seen your definition of paper. It's usually scraps of paper that you can never find again.

Sometimes they're little scraps. Other times it's a big piece of paper with two sentences. So, uh, yeah, there we are.

And sometimes it's a napkin. Yeah. And yes, yes.

I know. I've, I've known you a long time. And actually, um, I was out at, uh, one of my favorite places a couple of weeks ago and, uh, friends from out of town looked at me and said, do you still write on napkins? You did this years ago.

Didn't I give you a little notebook? Um, the answer to that was to everything was yes. I still write on napkins. And yes, you did give me that little notebook and, uh, have another drink on me.

Okay. And with that folks that takes care of this week's episode, please stay tuned for the continuing saga of everyone dies. And thank you for listening.

This is Charlie Navarette and from Dr. Ruth Westheimer. That's Dr. Ruth to you and I who recently died. May she rest in peace.

It's good to be a widow in New York because I can do something every night. And I'm Marian Matzo and we'll see you next week. Remember every day is a gift.

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