The Checklist I Built Three Days Before My Father Died

Three days before my father died, I sat down at my desk and started writing a checklist.

Not because I was organized. Because I was terrified of what would happen if I didn't. My father had gone into hospice care that morning. The end was close. And I realized that when the moment came, nobody in my family would know what to do first.

So I built a document — a master checklist that covered everything from the moment of death through the funeral, the military burial, and the financial aftermath. Six phases. Dozens of tasks. Four siblings coordinating across the country.

That document saved my family. But I shouldn't have had to build it at the worst possible moment of my life.

Phase 1: Before he passed

My father, Thomas Lydon, was a Korean War veteran — an EN2 in the U.S. Navy. He had a trust. He had expressed his wishes. But none of that mattered without the practical logistics being lined up in advance.

The first thing I learned: you cannot book a military burial at a national cemetery without a DD-214 — the veteran's discharge document. We didn't have the original. I submitted an emergency request to the National Personnel Records Center on January 4th. My father passed on January 6th. We got the document in time, but barely.

While I was tracking down the DD-214, I was also calling cremation providers, coordinating with the national cemetery, and managing the military honors process. We found a local provider who could handle the cremation, but most of the military logistics fell on me — getting the DD-214 to the right offices, scheduling the honor guard, securing the burial flag. I wrote down the provider's 24-hour phone number and gave it to the hospice nurse.

Why this matters: When my father passed at 6 AM, the hospice nurse called the provider directly. We didn't have to scramble in the middle of the night looking for a phone number. That one piece of preparation — writing down a number and handing it to the right person — changed how that morning went for my entire family.

Phase 2: The moment of death

January 6th, 2026. 6:00 AM.

The most important thing I put in the checklist was this: Do NOT call 911. Call hospice. The hospice nurse comes to the house, pronounces death, and calls the cremation provider. The provider arrived within 90 minutes.

If you call 911, paramedics are legally required to attempt resuscitation. For a hospice patient, that's not what anyone wants. This is the kind of thing nobody tells you until you're in it — and if you don't know it in advance, you make decisions under shock that you can't take back.

Phase 3: The arrangements — all hands on deck

This is the part that surprised me most. I thought settling a death was one person's job — the executor, or the oldest child, or whoever steps up first. It's not. It took our entire family working in parallel for weeks. Six siblings, spouses, cousins — everyone had a role.

Here's what it looked like in the days after my father passed:

One of us handled the mortuary contract, ordered 10 certified death certificates, confirmed the urn dimensions, and coordinated with San Rafael Parish for the funeral Mass. Someone else wrote the eulogy — one page, under ten minutes, submitted to the priest two days before the service.

The trustee became the person on the phone with every institution my father had ever touched. Cancelling the home care contract. Closing bank accounts. Calling the credit card company about an outstanding balance on an insolvent estate. Negotiating with the hospital over an outstanding bill. Calling the ambulance company about another balance. Opening a trust checking account, consolidating all the funds, and distributing what was left. Filing taxes. Notifying the DMV, the Registrar of Voters, the Franchise Tax Board, and the IRS.

Another sibling handled the life insurance claims and distributions — closing accounts, withdrawing remaining funds, contacting the VA about survivor benefits and burial allowances.

Others handled the readings and music for the Mass — Old Testament, New Testament, the hymns. Someone put together a slideshow of my father's life. Someone else coordinated the music playlist. Family members selected the hymns — On Eagle's Wings, Amazing Grace, Ave Maria, Shepherd Me O God.

The point: This wasn't one person's job. It was a full family mobilization — siblings, spouses, cousins, and a parish community, all working from the same checklist. Without that document, we would have been duplicating effort, dropping tasks, and stepping on each other.

The church and the cemetery

We held the funeral Mass at San Rafael Parish on January 29th. The eulogy was delivered at 10:00 AM. Mass started at 10:10. The reception followed in the parish hall — the church's catering volunteers served 100 guests.

The next morning, January 30th, we drove to Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery at Point Loma. We arrived at 9:00 AM. The service was at 9:30 — twenty minutes at the committal shelter. Military honors. Taps. The flag folded and presented. One of my brothers spoke on behalf of the family.

My father was placed in the columbarium — next to my mother, who was already there.

We separated the church and the cemetery into two days on purpose. Thursday was for grieving together and celebrating his life. Friday was for the formal military committal. It gave our family space to be present for both without rushing through either.

Phase 6: The financial aftermath

This is the part nobody prepares you for, and it went on for months.

My father's estate was insolvent — there wasn't enough money to cover all the debts. The trustee had to navigate California's priority-of-payments rules and make call after call to creditors, explaining the situation. Some wrote off balances. Some didn't. Each one required a death certificate, a conversation, and documentation.

A trust checking account had to be opened. An EIN had to be obtained from the IRS — they accidentally issued two, which meant writing a letter to merge them. Bank accounts had to be closed and funds consolidated. Life insurance had to be claimed and distributed. Tax obligations had to be researched and resolved.

Every one of these tasks required a different document, a different phone number, and a different family member to own it. The checklist was the only thing that kept us from losing track of what had been done and what still needed to happen.

What this checklist became

I built that checklist in a state of controlled panic. It was a Google Doc with checkboxes and phone numbers and owner assignments. It wasn't pretty. But it was the single most useful document my family had during the hardest month of our lives.

Every sibling could open it and see: what's done, what's not, who's responsible, and what comes next.

After it was over, I looked at that document and thought: why did I have to build this from scratch, under pressure, three days before my father died? Why doesn't something like this already exist?

That's when EmberKeep stopped being an idea and became something I had to build. Not a checklist for after someone dies — a vault you build while you're alive, so your family never has to do what I did.

The DD-214 location. The mortuary phone number. The attorney's contact. The account list. The funeral wishes. The personal letters. All of it, organized and ready, before the phone rings at 6 AM.

— Michael, Founder of EmberKeep