Beneficiary care, built for the 21st century

My partner’s last weeks were a blur of pain and confusion. One day he was testing positive for COVID. A few days later we were making the awful decision to go to the ER in the middle of the night. A week from that, he stopped breathing. The hospital told me they had his body in the morgue. I was flat on the floor. Now I have to figure all this out by myself? It was just overwhelming. A Care Manager guided me through the first steps: She helped me write a list of the people in my life I should contact first, to get support. Then she helped me pick a funeral home, and called them for me. She showed me the tools in the app that would help, like a checklist I could follow to plan each part of the funeral. It was these small things that got me through the first few terrible days.

My mom was my best friend. But when I went to write her obituary, I froze. The words just didn’t come. I felt like I was letting her down. The Care Manager I talked to about it got me chatting about my mom: her favorite holiday traditions, her favorite possessions (a well-loved collection of Aerosmith concert tees). Then she walked me through the Empathy obituary writing process, step by step, until it was finished. I kept adding more, just writing and writing. Remembering everything. I was so exhausted, and so relieved. I think she would have liked what I wrote about her.