Sir Ian Botham was understandably emotional on Gary Richardson’s Sportsweek on BBC Radio 5, recalling the deaths of Tony Greig and Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the space of a few days.

Both will be terribly missed for similar reasons: their passionate love of cricket, their ability as commentators, their instantly recognisable voices, traditional values, senses of humour, strong personalities and personal and professional achievements.

There’s no need to go into details of their lives here, for there have been excellent obituaries. CMJ, or the Major as his colleagues called him, was chief cricket correspondent for the Telegraph and its obituary is a model. The Guardian’s obituary of Tony Greig is also excellent.

Both died from complications caused by cancer, both at tragically early ages,  Greig at 66, CMJ at 67. Despite the advances in medical research and healthier lifestyles – Tony Greig and CMJ exercised, played golf and probably ate well – cancer is still an effective killer.  So too are other illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and the increasingly common dementia in its various forms.

And then there are the random acts of stupidity, violence, nature and accident that take lives too early and with such shocking and devastating effect.

Yet so many people seem to deny that death will one day or another come to them… ‘who wants to think about their death?’ is still a common response when My Last Song is talked about.

Continue with this view if you want your final event to be dreary, unmemorable, distressing for your loved ones and inappropriate to your life and beliefs.

If on the other hand, you want to take responsibility for how you leave this world, to be remembered the way you want to be remembered, to have your life celebrated, to reduce the grief and anxiety felt by your friends and family then visit My Last Song to help plan your funeral and store your memories in your Lifebox so that future generations will know the real you. For all we leave when we go are our memories.

A widower in Belgrade, Serbia has honoured his wife’s last request by having a replica of her vagina etched onto her tombstone.

When Milena Marinkovic died three years ago, she left her husband Milan a letter explaining the reason for her strange request. She didn’t want Milan looking at other women after she died.

This is a novel way of being remembered, not without its merits though unlikely to achieve its purpose.

But it’s a shame that Milena wasn’t aware of the My Last Song Lifebox, as she could have stored pictures of her vagina and indeed any other images in this secure online facility to remind Milan of what was likely to have been a memorable sex life.

She could have chosen those who she wanted to open her Lifebox…we recommend a fairly restricted group of friends and very close family, and thus saved the blushes (or smirks) of the stonemason and those noticing the unusual opening etched on the grave.

Should anyone else feel like putting images or any messages designed to keep their memories in front of their loved ones, consider getting a Lifebox…far more private for your privates.

I was saddened to read in today’s Metro the story of the Liverpool family who had the PC stolen on which mementoes and memories of their recently departed mother had been stored.

As a Merseyside police officer said: ‘The images on the computers cannot be replaced. This burglary has devastated the family.’

This was the last thing this poor family deserved, because the mother, Laura, was only 29 when diagnosed with an aggressive cancer which took her life six weeks later. In those six weeks, she had recorded herself singing and other messages as well as photos for the family, and in particular her young son Elliot.

It is a real life example of the benefits of the My Last Song Lifebox. This is a secure online storage area which can only be created by the owner, and only accessed by the people to whom he or she gives an access key that will open the Lifebox on your PC or other device.

Within the Lifebox are sections to make it simple to store information. These include photos, music, scrapbooks, lifestory, friends, family, funeral wishes, favourite things…there’s even a section for your secrets.

It can also store a copy of your will, advance decision (aka living will) and death plan.

There’s a free period for people to try the Lifebox.  The more who store their precious memories in the Lifebox, the less chance of the terribly sad loss suffered by Laura’s family.

My Last Song has decided not to publish the pictures of Prince Harry cavorting naked in a room in a Las Vegas hotel.

This is not because we think he deserves privacy. Indeed we support The Sun’s arguments for publishing the photos…they inform a discussion about the Prince, his behaviour, his character, his friends and his security taking place across the country and beyond.

Nor are we, as a website, cowed by the Leveson inquiry. Unlike the Sun, other UK newspapers seem frightened to publish these photographs in case the judge decides that the level of media regulation he’ll undoubtedly recommend is heightened a notch or two.

We haven’t been influenced by St James’s Palace or those close to the Prince who have asked the media quite reasonably to respect the privacy of a young man doing nothing more than having a good time with friends.

The deciding issue for My Last Song was a business reason. We have created a Lifebox, a secure online storage area for people’s memories to be available for future generations to access and understand better the life and times of the departed loved one.

The Lifebox has easy to populate sections including ‘Family’, ’Friends’, ‘Lifestory’, ‘Obituary’ and, yes, ‘Secrets’.

The Lifebox can only be opened by those given an access key, and once opened nothing within the Lifebox can be altered.

Each section has the facility to store photographs and other digital information.

We want our visitors to understand the benefit to them and their loved ones of populating their Lifebox with the memories, even secrets, that they only want close family and friends to see. These may include photographs, videos, letters, emails that would be very embarrassing if made available to a wider public.

And that dear reader is why you won’t see photos of Prince Harry on My Last Song.

I’ve got a lot of time for Poppy Mardell, who runs Poppy’s Funerals: The Modern Funeral Company.

Her business is recommended by the Good Funeral Guide and the Natural Death Centre and they don’t give out their recommendations lightly.

Poppy wrote a particularly interesting piece in Huffington Post, Funerals: Why Do We Spend So Much? She answered the question in these words:

“The reason we blow money on funerals… is a mixture of the unstoppable pain we feel after a death, mixed with our complete inexperience of arranging a funeral, with a drop of terror at finding ourselves in an undertaker’s shop decked out in the style of Oliver Twist. We will go along with anything they suggest. Which is insane. Because whilst undertakers are often lovely people…they are running a business and they need to pay for the costs of the fleet of hearses, the chapels of rest, the embalmer’s salary. So they’re going to encourage you to buy the whole package.”

She is absolutely right, and it’s been clear to me for a long time that people pay too much for funerals because they are uninformed customers making what is usually a panic purchase.

There is also another reason, and that is the family dynamics, or psychology. Which family member is going to say: “Do we really need to spend so much on mother’s funeral?” Who would risk the recrimination of wanting to save money on the funeral, or the shame of the implicit lack of money to pay for it?

My Last Song was created to inform people of the choices they had, to encourage people to plan ahead, thereby turning our visitors into informed customers of the funeral trade and able to make a more rational rather than panic purchase.

We also knew of the problems of ensuring that funeral wishes – let’s say wanting a green funeral, or a humanist celebration of life, or having a message read or played to the gathering –  were recorded and fulfilled.

That’s why we spent a lot of time, and money, creating a digital Lifebox in which funeral wishes can be stored securely, available only to close family members. The Lifebox does more than store your funeral wishes, it helps you record everythin that was important about your life that you want future generations to know about you…a sort of digital immortality.

Use your Lifebox properly and not only will your funeral be remembered for the right reasons, but your life as well. It’s the least you can do for your family.

People will be rightly shocked and worried by Channel 4’s Dispatches Undercover Undertaker (Monday, 25 June) exposure of Co-operative Funeralcare’s impersonal, dishonest and overtly commercial handling of funerals.

The production line ‘hub’ for the treatment of bodies is the inevitable result of rationalising (making more profitable) the most time consuming part of the process. The advice to embalm – damaging to the environment, expensive and usually unnecessary – and the reluctance to make customers aware of cheaper coffins, are also the results of profit being more important than service.

Given the nature of TV exposures, I’m pretty sure that the majority of Co-operative Funeralcare staff give a better service and are more sympathetic to the wishes of their customers than portrayed in the programme. But since when has good news or good behaviour been highlighted by the media?

Charles Cowling, publisher of the Good Funeral Guide, made the very good point during the programme that most customers make their funeral decisions without any knowledge…a funeral is normally a panic purchase.

Death, our own and that of loved ones, is inevitable so there is really no excuse not to plan for it. It is also depressing, awkward and difficult to address. So go one of two ways. Ignore or plan.

Ignore and you risk the treatment exposed by Dispatches…and the more likely the profit motive will prevail over ethical service within the funeral industry.

Plan and you’ll get the send off you or your loved one deserve, pay a lot less and help move the funeral industry forward. For businesses are only as good as their customers want them to be.

My Last Song was established because we believed a ‘good life deserves a good ending’. Another catch phrase that sums up our philosophy is the encouragement to visitors to ‘plan their exit strategies’.

To this end we have many articles on funeral planning, but to make matters easier…and to get the best service possible from the funeral director, go to the funeral planning checklist article and print out the checklist. Use it to plan the funeral, and get the best deal.

If you think your demise, or that of loved ones, is some time away, store it in your Lifebox.

Far better than ignoring the funeral planning until it’s too late, because then it really is too late.

A touching and important blog deserves close reading, though have a tissue near by.

It’s from Dr Kimberly Manning, who works at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta Georgia. In it she describes how and why the decision was made not to prolong unnecessarily the life of one Mrs Cafferty and how it was accepted by her family, there at the hospital by the side of the dying woman.

When challenged by a colleague why the medical team shouldn’t do all they could to keep this patient alive, Dr Manning replied: “Mrs Cafferty is dying.”

The blog continues: “I stated the facts and left it at that. In silence, it set in. I could see their wheels turning. Imagining those same things that I was thinking like, Why are we sticking her with needles and pricking her fingers for blood sugars when those things hurt? Why are we not focusing on keeping her as comfortable as possible?

“We entered her room that morning and…discussed these things with the family. By this point, Mrs Cafferty was lapsing in and out of consciousness, so this conversation took place with her children. And no, this was not the first time that the subject of end-of-life care had been brought up with them, but it was the first time they were ready to accept what was happening.

“ “Let her go in peace,” the eldest daughter finally said. “This is our decision. Mama would not want us to keep her alive this way. Please just keep her comfortable.” The rest of the family nodded in sombre agreement.”

Why this is important is that it describes a changing of a mindset that assumes the medical profession should do all it can to keep someone alive regardless of the diminution of quality of that life, to one where the futility of such intervention leads to its withdrawal. And so, with the informed consent of the family, medical treatment is ended so that death can come naturally, with no more tubes, chemicals, machines or doctors’ valuable time used to delay the inevitable.

In short, society and the medical profession are beginning to believe that while the prolonging of life is accepted as a medical absolute, to prolong death is a futile, cruel and costly perversion.

To make this changing view of medical practice more acceptable, it’s essential that people have their individual death plans, filled in following discussion by the ailing patient, their close family, their medical professionals and if appropriate a minister of religion.

My Last Song has created a holistic death plan that covers the medical, physical, emotional, spiritual and practical issues, even down to who looks after the pets. It includes considerations such as the aromas the patient wants to smell, music to hear, people to be present, where the patient wants to end their life and, of course, the level of medical intervention.

Its aim is to make the end of life as comfortable and comforting as possible.

The easy to complete template can be found in the Lifebox section of My Last Song. Once filled in, it can be securely stored, updated and accessed by selected loved ones so the end of life experienced by the dying will be one supported by those like Dr Manning who have the quality of their patients’ lives foremost in their minds.

A survey on people’s end of life wishes carried out by the California Health Care Foundation in late 2011 came up with the following findings:

67%: Making sure family is not burdened financially by my care;
66%: Being comfortable and without pain;
61%: Being at peace spiritually;
60%: Making sure family is not burdened by tough decisions about my care;
60%: Having loved ones around me;
58%: Being able to pay for the care I need;
57%: Making sure my wishes for medical care are followed;
55%: Not feeling alone;
44%: Having doctors and nurses who will respect my cultural beliefs and values;
36%: Living as long as possible;
33%: Being at home;
32%: Having a close relationship with my doctor.

The Foundation, in summarising the findings, says that there’s “a disconnect between what Californians want (a natural death at home) and reality.” The various poll answers, available in the pdf, prove this conclusively.

What’s true for Californians is true for older people in this country too, and in most developed nations facing the same issues of increasing numbers of old people, the taboo around discussing dying and death, and medical advances which make prolonging life in hospital more likely than a natural death at home.

So, how to make the end of life experience less a ‘disconnect’ with what people want and more a positive, comfortable and comforting experience?

Well, encouraging ailing older people and the terminally ill to have a personal death plan would be a great step forward. It would enable the patient, their loved ones, their medical professionals and, if appropriate, their ministers of faith, to discuss openly and honestly the end of life experience the patient wants, and if at all possible, deliver these wishes.

We have created a holistic death plan that covers the medical, physical, emotional, spiritual and practical issues, even down to who looks after the pets. Less prosaic are considerations such as the aromas the patient wants to smell, music to hear, people to be present, where the patient wants to end their life and, of course, the level of medical intervention.

If the adoption of death plans became widespread, far more people would have the end of life experience they, and their loved ones, want.

To make it easy, there’s a simple to complete template in the Lifebox section of My Last Song. Once filled in, in can be securely stored, updated and accessed by selected loved ones.

The more people who have their death plans, the more seriously they will be taken by the medical profession.

Congratulations to the University of Nottingham, Dying Matters and the National End of Life Care Programme for producing the excellent Planning for your future care publication.

It is written in simple, positive prose and covers all aspects of Advance Care Planning including what is the most difficult aspect, ‘Opening the conversation’.  The tone for the leaflet is set in this telling phrase: ‘Not everyone will choose to engage in such a conversation and that is fine. However, talking and planning ahead means that your wishes are more likely to be known by others.’

I was particularly pleased that the leaflet covered wishes and preferences, and that these included some of the end of life experience defined in the My Last Song ‘death plan.’  Planning for your future care suggests where you want to be, who you want to be with, types of treatment, ‘how you like to do things,’ with examples such as sleeping with the light on or having a shower instead of a bath.

If you, or an ailing loved one,  want to have a ‘good death’ instead of a lonely, frightening end of life, then read Planning for your future care and act on its advice. To make the end of life experience as good as it can be,  fill in your own personal death plan, a template for which is available in the My Last Song Lifebox.

The wishes and preferences are more holistic, covering the music you want to hear; the smells you want surrounding you; the food and drink you wish to taste; the sensations you want your body to feel, such as caressing, massaging, stroking; what you want to see, such as a lovely view or your favourite photographs; how you want to look – clothes, make up, hair style; and ensuring the practical issues are resolved so you have no concerns.

By involving loved ones, doctors and if appropriate ministers of religion or spiritual advisers, having a death plan will go a considerable way to ensuring, if possible, the death is as comfortable and comforting as possible.

There’s a lot happening in the normally quiet death and dying space.  Much of this activity is due to the London Southbank Centre’s courageous decision to put on a week’s events centred on death, in an attempt to reduce society’s reluctance to face mortality.

Part of this will be Sandi Toksvig’s memorial lecture, which she trails with her trademark endearing and engaging wit here.

I’m also looking forward to Paul Gambaccini’s Desert Island Death Discs event, as it will look at the top funeral songs and what they tell us us about our attitudes to departing this world. Will he, I wonder, have gone through the 130 or so lists of farewell songs sent in by visitors to My Last Song?

The Natural Burial Ground’s funeral survey results have also been released, and have some interesting if rather partial findings. The survey has clearly and unsurprisingly been answered mainly by those in or close to the funeral business. What we liked about the results was the large percentages of people who go online to get information about funerals and who have written down or told relatives of their funeral wishes.

Sadly as these wishes are often misplaced or disregarded, such admirable intentions are a waste of time. Which is why people should store their funeral wishes and the vital information required by close loved ones immediately after the death in their own Lifebox.

High on the news agenda today was the story that data from the Office for National Statistics showed that dehydration or malnutrition was linked to 25 deaths every week last year. This is the shocking and depressing counterpoint to the admirable efforts others are making, often out of benevolent self interest, to encourage a change in how the British in particular look at death.

Depressingly it is still true that the vast majority of people don’t think about death and don’t talk about death until it is literally too late. And so the chances of having a good death are still remote as we pointed out earlier, with almost 70 per cent of people dying in hospitals or hospices even though over two thirds say they want to die at home.

My Last Song has supported the case for the terminally ill and the ailing elderly to have their own personal death plans, rather as mums-to-be have birth plans. This way the issues surrounding the end of life can be addressed in as calm a way as possible, with the involvement of loved ones, medical professionals and if appropriate, ministers of religion or other comforters.

After some research we created a holistic death plan template which covers emotional, physical, medical, practical and spiritual issues to make the end of life as comfortable and comforting as possible.

Funeral wishes, death plans and the raising of the public’s consciousness about death and dying are pointing in the right direction, but there’s still a long way to go.