La Voz de Galicia – February 10, 2023 →
The book was on one of those counters where great supermarkets place cardboard boxes, one of those that have from throat lozenges and chocolate bonbons to gossip magazines and self-help books. The matter is that while I was waiting my turn to pay, I grabbed some chocolates (which of course I didn’t need), and I looked over one of those books, the one with the rather unappealing title: In Case You Get Hit by a Bus, written by Abby Scheniderman, Adam Seifer, and Gene Newman, the founders of Everplans, a digital platform designed to create an archive of all that a person’s loved ones may need in a worst-case scenario. The truth is that the three minutes I was there waiting, I looked through the index and realized that, in the digital age, it is even more difficult to prepare things for when one goes from being alive to being dead than in the analogic age. Phone, banks, insurance, social media, subscriptions, bills…everything is digital, everything has passwords that not even I remember, and precisely the book begins with this, with how to share them in a secure way when one is no longer here. And then, suddenly, I felt overwhelmed and before moving on to the second page, I returned the book to the counter it came from, and I tried to change the subject in my head.
At times, I ask myself at what moment one has to begin to think about that other stage in life’s journey. At other times, like today, I look the other way, grab another packet of chocolates, pay for my purchases, and walk on without putting myself in the worst-case scenario because, in truth, I am not in a rush to depart…