When I Die


2016

Will writing workshop and conversation about death
Presented at East Portland Community Center, Portland, OR




Document-As-Artwork


When I Die is a will writing workshop where people draft, discuss, witness, and sign their own legally valid wills using a basic template I wrote after vigorous legal research on death laws in Oregon. Typically, a will designates to whom you give your s

tuff. This will, however, diverges from that format as a poetic, functional work of art. The When I Die will holds space to share who you are, how you live your life, the legacy you want to leave behind, and who you want to inherit the objects you treasure most. At the end of the workshop, participants witness and sign each other's will.


Download A Will Template


If you would like to download your own "When I Die" will template, please click here for the print PDF. Find two witnesses to sign it when you finish.

"The art of dying is the art of living. The honesty and grace of the years of life that are ending is the real measure of how we die. It is not in the last weeks or days that we compose the message that will be remembered, but in all the decades that proceeded them.”

―Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die


Image Credit: Anke Schüttler