Welcome to Goodbye Guide

The idea for the Goodbye Guide came to me after the death of my sister Claire. In 2023 at the age of 55, Claire died very suddenly and unexpectedly from a previously undetected or suspected Aortic aneurysm. She was 55 years old, in extremely good health, always exercising whilst enjoying life to the full, and had never even thought about or discussed her own funeral arrangements with anyone.

This left the family naturally devastated and we had a funeral to plan. So many times one of us would say “What would she have wanted?” or “Do you think this is what she would like?”. referring to the many choices that have to be made when planning a funeral.

I think we did her proud and we gave her a good “send off”, as you would say, which was a true celebration of her life and her character.

So, that got me thinking about how much easier this would have been for all of the family, if Claire had written down all her funeral wishes somewhere, so that we didn't need to guess what she may have wanted, but we would have known what she wanted. That's when the Goodbye Guide was born in my mind.

After a 40 year career in Branch Banking I retired recently and now have the time to devote to getting The Goodbye Guide up and running with my two fantastic colleagues, Luke and Bill, to help me.

My ultimate vision is for everyone to have a Goodbye Guide in the same way that everyone should have a Will. It's not an easy subject to discuss your own funeral, but it's a lot easier to do it now than to leave everything to guesswork for your family.

Don't leave your loved ones guessing.