Love, Loss, and a Little Punk Rock
As many of you know, over the past few weeks I lost two close family members. It would be nice if impactful events didn’t bunch up like this, but life runs on its own timeline. So does grief.
Grief does not arrive in a nice, neat package. It doesn’t start and end at fixed moments. Sometimes it’s a tsunami, crashing over and overwhelming. Other times, it arrives in quiet moments and conversations. It never quite leaves you, but it changes shape over time as it integrates into your life.
Recently, I told a friend:
“To have profound loss is to have had profound love.
Loving people is not even a risk. It is a certainty. Someone will always experience this pain.
But y’know, it’s punk AF.”
Choosing to love deeply, knowing that loss is inevitable, is one of the bravest things we do. Grief is not a possibility in life. It is a certainty. The only question is timing – and it’s never, ever the right time.
Yet, we keep choosing love anyway.
That’s powerful. It’s brave. And yes, punk rock.
I want to sincerely thank everyone for your patience and understanding over the past few weeks. Life does go on, and at the same time, space is required. Your flexibility, kindness, and support have meant more than I can express. In seasons like this, grace is not something we take for granted. It is something we deeply appreciate.
Of course, we just cannot stop being financial planners, and we want to use our experiences to help you. This one has brought into sharp focus the importance of our legal documents, such as Power of Attorney and Wills, our beneficiary designations, and our up-to-date tax filings. While it’s not common for these documents to sound or feel like a good time when we’re creating or updating them, the reality is that when we do so, we are engaging in acts of care.
This preparation ensures that the people who care for us have as much as we can give them to help them through the difficult experience of losing us. We are helping our loved ones through stress by easing the pathway for them. There is far more administration than most of us can imagine, even with good planning in place – and you know my family members had good plans!
The discussions we had, so that I always knew what they wanted, have helped so much. Knowing exactly where to find the original legal documents reduced stress. Contacting the provincial memorial society limited the number of decisions I had to make.
Even so, there’s a lot of work to be done. It hasn’t been easy, and this work is somewhat in my wheelhouse. For people who don’t spend time on incapacity and estate planning in their day-to-day life – like the people in your family who will have to do these kinds of things in the future – it has got to be soul-crushingly difficult.
Demographic change means every family is going to be dealing with incapacity and death with increasing frequency over the next 10 to 20 years. People are living longer, but the largest generation in history isn’t immortal. At the same time, families are more geographically spread out. Wealth has become more complex. Relationships and family structures are constantly changing. Many of us are, or will be, caring for aging parents, acting as executors, updating estate documents, managing incapacity, or facilitating transitions – sometimes all at once.
This is not a distant issue. It is happening now, and it will continue to happen at scale.
Planning does not remove grief. Nothing can. That’s not the goal. Grief is an important part of the healing process. What planning does do is reduce administrative burden, protect relationships, and create clarity during moments that are already hard. It allows families to focus on supporting one another instead of navigating uncertainty.
Loving people will always mean accepting that loss is part of the equation. That truth can feel heavy, but it also reflects the depth of connection in our lives. Planning ahead is not about anticipating tragedy. It is about honouring love with preparation, so that when life inevitably shifts, families have guidance, structure, and support in place.
Thank you again for your patience, your understanding, and your kindness during this time. It has meant a great deal.
If anything, this season has reinforced for me that we do not engage in estate planning because we expect the worst. We do it because we value what is most important in our lives: each other.
We’ve written and talked a lot about estate planning. You can check out some of our favourites here.
Your Spring Planning Team
Practice Notes:
Our team will be taking Good Friday and Easter Monday to enjoy time with family, and we hope you also get a chance to relax and connect with the people you love.
Have more questions? Drop us a note at info@springplans.ca.
Spring in the News:
Julia joined Michèle on the Differentiation with Michèle podcast to share how using our gifts, planning intentionally, and making thoughtful decisions can truly support the people we care about. Check it out here.
Julia chatted with Rita Silvan from The Globe and Mail about the role of emotional intelligence in wealth management and how connecting with clients as individuals leads to better outcomes. Read the full article here.
Please check out our media page here for videos, podcasts, interviews and more.
Planning News Digest:
The BC Property Tax Deferral program is changing, and it’s not going to be as cool as it used to be. You can find information on the changes right here.
Tax season is upon us! CRA has revamped its services… so what can you expect? Find out here.
We would love it if you started talking with your family about some tough things like incapacity and estates… but you may find that conversation hard to start. Here’s an article from our friends at Bellrock about hard conversations that may help.
Feature from the Archives:
Bright days, tough truths. Julia and the team share how facing grief and planning ahead shows love and care. Read this article from our archives for a deeper look at these important conversations.
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