As much as I love writing about the law, it’s important to sometimes take a moment to acknowledge the people that it affects.

I’ve noticed that over the past few months I’ve worked with several clients who felt motivated to revisit their estate planning after the death of someone they knew. But, in each case, the death didn’t impact the planning; the deceased wasn’t a beneficiary or trustee of the estate. Rather, the death simply acted as a catalyst that caused the client to reflect on how they’ve set things up and endeavor to ensure that their planning is as effective as possible.

Make no mistake, though—I could feel a sense of grief from each of these clients. And I think when we encounter death the after effects resonate beyond a simple reminder. Every time we are faced with the death of a loved one, we are forced to reflect on our own circumstances and ask ourselves difficult questions: “How am I going to manage if X ever died?” “What does this mean for me?” “Will I ever feel normal again?” Of course, the significance of these questions in each case turns on our relationship to the deceased, but given that everybody dies we all come to these crossroads sooner or later.

Speaking of reflection, I’ve set the image for this blog post to the album cover for I Want To Disappear, an album by California-based pop punk band The Story So Far. The Story So Far is one of my all-time favourite bands; I love pop punk as a genre and what I really love about them is that they take such a fresh approach to their songwriting and recording. I’m a huge music fan, and I realized that this album—which I’ve been listening to quite a bit over the past several months—relates a lot to what I’ve been experiencing in my own life lately. The album cover—created by visual artist Nick Dahlen—depicts someone looking into a mirror, but they don’t appear to have a reflection. Instead, we see a large crack in the mirror.

I Want To Disappear came out earlier this year and is, to me, a masterpiece. The central theme of the album is loss and grief. In the time leading up to its completion, the band’s lead singer Parker Cannon experienced the loss of his father. What I find so profound about this album is how the deep love that Parker had for his father that really shines through in the music. There is so much emotion in the lyrical composition and delivery. The melodies are beautiful but the guitars, drums and bass still hit hard. The pop punk genre has its fair share of overdone tropes and cliches, but I think I Want To Disappear is able to escape all of that because it comes from such a real place. It certainly moved me when I first listened to it because it reminds me of my own relationships.

And that’s the issue: in terms of these relationships, as I get older I find myself feeling more and more surrounded by death. I’ve had mentors and peers pass away. I’ve seen friends and colleagues lose loved ones as well. Even in my day-to-day work life, I’ve had clients where we were speaking and exchanging jokes one week, and I learned about their passing the next.

And of course, like anyone else, I’ve lost family members. What has really stuck with me is the impact that these losses have had on the rest of my family. For instance, I have lost two first cousins to cancer in their early 30s. In both cases, it completely changed their fathers—I saw firsthand the heartbreaking grip that grief can have on a person’s entire being. Even as I write this I don’t want to think about those memories and that imagery, but I also believe that it’s healthy to confront these notions from time-to-time because it allows us to better understand and approach similar situations in the future.

But I think what I’m trying to say is that grief is like some sort of raw resource. It can either consume you and prevent any action, or be channeled into something productive or profound. It can push you or paralyze you. In coming to terms with my own losses, I wish I had done a bit more with my own grief. This applies even to the types of loss and grief that don’t stem from death; over the years I’ve also had to say goodbye to friendships and relationships and I always find it to be such an immensely difficult thing to do. We’ve all been in places where we’ve expended so much physical, mental and/or spiritual energy dealing with loss, and I suppose sometimes I wish I had channeled it a little bit differently. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20, and we can’t always control every part of our experiences.

Turning back to I Want To Disappear, I think The Story So Far has done exactly that—they’ve taken grief and channeled it into something truly moving. I’d like to share a few of my favourite songs:

• “Nothing to Say”: I’ve listened to this song so many times on my walk to the office. It’s an aggressive track that delves into contemplating returning to a past relationship while simultaneously dealing with the loss of a loved one. It’s about looking for ways to fill the void caused by death, but trying to discern what’s healthy and what isn’t. The breakdown near the end of this track is absolutely amazing, and the lyrics relate to a lot of what I’ve been writing about here:

Soaking in the mirror, staring back into the wall

And when I move the wrong way

Will you guide me if I fall?

How can I believe you’re there if I don’t feel you at all?

• “White Shores”: Many fans are saying that this is the best song the band has ever written. It focuses more specifically on Parker dealing with the loss of his father, framed in the context of a scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King:

  Like “Nothing to Say”, the breakdown in the last third of the song absolutely soars. Parker shows an immense vocal range and the track reaches a thunderous climax. I think this song is emblematic of being able to blend beautiful and traumatic life experiences together and making something truly meaningful out of them.

• “I Want To Disappear”: The eponymous closing track is a shorter acoustic rendition, with ethereal vocals from Parker. This one actually doesn’t reference loss or grief that much; it more so goes back to the idea of revisiting a past relationship and seeing if things can work out this time. It’s perhaps the most reflective song on the album, and gives a sense of healing and moving forward. It’s an amazing, moodily mid-tempo and reminiscing closer to what is otherwise a high-octane album.

Ironically, the lyrics of the closing track don’t actually contain the phrase “I want to disappear”. Focusing on that for a moment, I note that when you simply Google this phrase the first thing you’ll see are mental health and suicide prevention resources specifically provided by Google (i.e. they’re shown before you get any regular results). This reveals the darker side of grief and ominously makes the meaning of the album cover clearer. For some, the effects of the loss of a loved one can be so great that it can rob them of all joy or impetus for their own life.

But, to me, the silver lining about this all is that even though death is something I deal with so much—whether hypothetically or in reality—I feel that most clients are still also motivated by love. After all, estate planning is typically a conscious exercise to ensure that your beneficiaries (family, friends, even charities you care deeply about) get the best outcome possible given the circumstances. Even though grief is sometimes the spark that gets some people moving, I would like to think that love is the ultimate, foundational catalyst. After all, you probably won’t feel grief if you didn’t feel some form of love in the first place. And I think that’s what I Want To Disappear is trying to get at.

I promise for the next post I’ll get back to our regularly-scheduled legal analysis, but I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of these thoughts. And thankfully, when I look in the mirror I can still see my own reflection; I wish the same for all of you too. Happy Friday and have a great weekend!