By the way, please consider doing two or three favors....

[kyrielle]

(Pretty sure Dad did the first two, and they didn't help him. He was not the sort of man to skip either of them. But please do these things anyway...they are often helpful, at least.)

1. Drive carefully.
2. Keep an eye on road conditions, no matter what the weather report says.
3. Keep a record somewhere for whoever follows you, detailing at the very least whether you have a will (you do, right?) and where it is and what lawyer wrote it up (and their number). Ideally give also any info on people you would want contacted, where all your accounts are, and that sort of thing. Passwords for anything you want them to get into and update after you're gone. (Dad did this. I thought, when he talked about it years ago, that it was morbid and macabre (I also figured it was practical but I didn't want to think about my Dad dying - still don't, but...). That may or may not be the case, but it is also very useful. There is nothing that can make this less upsetting, but it could be more upsetting if I was having to figure all that out the hard way.)
4. Do up a little "in case of emergency contact...." card and put it in your purse or wallet. List several people, in order, and their relationship to you. My understanding is the police back-tracked to the house, got an address off a card in the mailbox, contacted that person, got to Dad's journal, got to my journal, and got my home address that way. How much simpler if they could have gotten the info from the wallet in his pocket.

(Speaking of contact info, some while back there was a meme encouraging people to put their contact info in a private entry on a particular day, and link it from their user-info. The LiveJournal administrators can access those posts, provided there is sufficient need - suicide threats or things like this. I don't know if that is how they got my address off my journal, but I suspect it may be, because I don't believe it's posted publically anywhere. I'm not quite going to make this #5, but it isn't a bad idea all around.)

Comments

[the_rck]

I've got a multi-sheet in-case-of-an-emergency thing in my purse. I wrote it up after I passed out at work many years ago and had to deal with people trying to get me alert enough to tell them what medications I was taking, how to reach Scott and so on. My medic alert necklace tells people to look there for my medical information, but it's also good for knowing who to contact, and I've added Delia's medical information to it since she might well be with me if something happens.

I've also got my contact information in the first (private) entry of this journal.

I've made Scott give me a list of the passwords for all our financial stuff. He handles that, but I've always been afraid of the repercussions of anything happening to him. Of course, I'd be in serious trouble over some other things like our server because I lack the technical expertise to administer it or in any way troubleshoot if something goes wrong.

[kyrielle]

Get him to write up the server-info stuff anyway. Dad wrote up his for his boxes. I only partially understand it - but I have friends who understand it all and can help me.

[kayre]

An ICE (In Case of Emergency) entry in your cell phone is good, too. Emergency personnel really are starting to look for this. You can make it "ICE David" or "ICE husband" to give them some idea who they're calling.

And thanks for the reminder, we need to update several of these after moving.

[kyrielle]

It is. Unfortunately, my cell phone sucks for this. It won't let me put a number in if it is already in. So, I can only list someone under ICE if I make that their only entry. :(

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

Does your cellphone address book let you do memos? What I did to get around the problem you describe is this: I made an entry in my cellphone titled "EMERGENCY CONTACTS". The entry consists only of a memo, listing the names and relationships of my first and second emergency contacts. These people are in my phone too, under the same names I used in the emergency memo. Each of their entries has a memo identifying their relationship to me and that they are an emergency contact.

[capnbuckle.livejournal.com]

My company actually requires employees to put extensive emergency contact info in our LDAP records. ...particularly info pertinent to hurricane evacuation.

I hadn't thought about the private entry idea, before! Thanks!

[kyrielle]

Sure thing! Do link it in your profile, if you do it - unless procedures have changed since I was on the abuse team, the profile is one of the first places they'll look, so a link there will save a fair bit of headache. :)