The Power of Planning Your Goodbye

And other things we don't anticipate as a youth

As some of you know, I launched my company, The Montage Queen, during the pandemic. Since then, I’ve created hundreds of videos—birthdays, mitzvahs, graduations, memorials, and everything in between. But one project shifted my outlook on what planning can look like as we age.

When you’re young, so many ideals about life feel set in stone, despite having zero real-world experience. I can remember the bold proclamations my friends and I made in high school: “I’ll never get divorced.” “I’m having four kids.” “I’m going to live in Manhattan.” “I want six bridesmaids” —- “I will never make my own celebration-of-life montage.”

Okay, so that last hypothetical wasn’t actually floated back then — but if it had been, I’m pretty sure my friends and I would’ve taken a — no way, that’s so morbid—stance.

So when a customer reached out a few years back asking for help creating her own memorial montage, I wasn’t quite sure how to feel. It certainly caught me off guard —

What’s the occasion? : Planning ahead for a Celebration Of Life. As I stated redacted’s mom and I were going through our cancer journeys together. Unfortunately mine is not going well either. I have been through a lot of loss in my family from cancer and know planning ahead will only make it easier emotionally on my wonderful husband and other loves. My husband and I are planning everything together. It’s been incredibly healthy and loving.

Robbie had been a participant in her friend’s memorial video mentioned above so I was able to go back to the video and really take her in. Like so many people who are battling horrible illness, she looked perfectly healthy to the untrained eye.

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A few things about this query had me frozen in place.

• Timeline: there was none. It was open ended which both made sense and felt terribly daunting.

• The volume of questions posed in her “contact us” submission. Including, but not limited to, “Can you rip videos off YouTube for me?”

• The project itself. Was this a journey I wanted to go on?

I sat on the inquiry for a few days, trying to figure out if this was something I truly wanted to take on. Like Robbie, I’ve also had a lot of loss in my life — the most recent at that time being my dad’s passing from cancer. I understood the battleground of fighting a disease and the complexities that come with it. If there was anyone out there making memorial montages who might be the right fit for a project like this— I had a feeling it was me.

I set up a consultation call with Robbie.