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Many families avoid conversations about death, leaving difficult decisions to crisis moments.

Caregiving often produces anticipatory grief and emotional strain long before death occurs.

Research shows caregiver burden increases risks for depression, stress, and health problems.

At her daughter’s first high school soccer game, Angela Crocker found herself unexpectedly frozen.

A few seats away sat a mother in her community who had recently lost a child in a tragic accident. Crocker—who now leads a nonprofit focused on end-of-life care and bereavement support—suddenly realized she didn’t know what to say.

“I was ashamed,” she later told me. “We are helping grievers. But we are not helping the community around the grievers.”

That moment reshaped how she thought about grief. If even those working in end-of-life care struggle to respond in real life, it raises a difficult question: how prepared is the rest of society? The answer, it seems, is not very. In a conversation about grief, caregiving, and community support, Crocker reflected on why so many people feel unprepared for death.

Across cultures, we are profoundly unprepared for death—not only practically, but psychologically and relationally.

We Prepare for Living Longer, Not for Dying

Crocker, executive director of the Parmenter Foundation, began her career as a lawyer. Today, she sees that training is unexpectedly influencing her thinking about end-of-life care: preparation.

“Planning,” she says, “lessens the chaos and the grief for those you leave behind.”

Yet culturally, these conversations rarely happen.

Modern societies devote enormous energy to extending life—through medicine, supplements, and lifestyle optimization. But discussions about how we want to live at the end of life remain largely absent.

Psychologically, this avoidance is understandable. Research suggests that reminders of mortality trigger existential anxiety, leading people to distance themselves from thoughts about death (Greenberg,........

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