David wouldn’t call it illness. He was “in a muddle” — his words — and nothing more. Yet at some point he lifted the wall calendar down, turned to its final page and wrote out his passwords, adding his mother’s maiden name in block capitals — the answer to the oldest security question there is. Nine days after he learned he had esophageal cancer, he was dead.
The book is Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man (Mariner, 208 pages, $28), reviewed in the Journal by the novelist Karin Altenberg, and David was Perry’s father-in-law. Altenberg’s review starts in Norwich, England, on an autumn day in 2022: David is late to meet Perry and her husband, Robert, at a department store, and the moment he appears, something in his walk and his face tells Perry, a novelist, that he’s dying. A doctor floats long Covid, and for a while David’s small domestic rounds carry on — enough that Perry wonders if she’s wrong. Then the tests come back.
What follows is the part many families meet unprepared. Perry and Robert move into David’s bungalow and sleep on the floor, though she has a novel to edit and he’s starting a new job. One evening she builds a spreadsheet of everything it takes to keep David comfortable — less because it’s essential than because putting things in order holds off dread — and, embarrassed to ask for help, finds it arrives fast when she does. A pastor, Luther, visits; Emmanuel, the overnight caregiver, keeps vigil with soccer on his laptop. During one prayer, the washing machine chimes in with a few bars of Schubert’s Trout Quintet to say the laundry’s done. As Perry writes, “what was funny existed alongside what was intolerably sad.” Altenberg calls the memoir tender and generous; its thesis is Perry’s: “there are no ordinary lives.”
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This is an Estate and Long-term care piece, and David did the hardest part: he wrote it down. Most of us haven’t. The checklist his calendar stands for starts with an inventory — every bank, brokerage and retirement account, insurance policy, utility and subscription, and where the logins live (a password manager with an emergency-access setting, or a sealed list kept with the will). Don’t forget the phone’s passcode; the phone is where most two-step codes land. Set up the legacy-contact options the big platforms now offer, and make sure beneficiary designations are current.
But a password isn’t permission. Logging in as someone else can break an account’s terms and, after a death, may run afoul of the law. What gives a family real authority is a durable financial power of attorney, signed while you’re clear-headed, for the stretch when someone’s “in a muddle” but still here; a health-care directive with a named agent and a HIPAA release, so doctors will talk; and a will that names an executor and lets them reach digital assets. Add a trusted contact on investment accounts — no power to trade, but someone the firm can call if something looks wrong. And add a line on how care gets paid for: here, Medicare generally doesn’t cover round-the-clock help at home. England’s rules differ from ours; the list travels. General planning principles, not legal advice. The calendar’s last page is a good start, but it’s kinder to fill it in while the sky is still clear.