I was taken aback when the participants of an informal focus group looking at My Last Song said they felt a reluctance to visit the Vault because it made them feel uncomfortable.

The Vault is the space within My Last Song where people can put the information required by their close family and executor when they die or when they feel it wise to allow the second key holder to access their funeral wishes, will, Letter of wishes etc.

It’s also where, I hope, people will store their personal details – obituary, achievements, secrets, photos, family history – that will give future members of their families an accurate insight into their lives and times…a sort of digital immortality.

The arguments against calling this area the Vault were:

• Not sure what a Vault was;
• It’s a place in a church where bodies were put;
• It’s a large safe which only rich people can afford to store their gold nuggets etc.

The alternative word that participants liked was Lifebox.  The case for Lifebox seems to me sound.

• It says ‘life’ and not death;
• It accurately describes the space in My Last Song – a virtual a storage box with various sections.

As the focus group was so small, I have tweeted and emailed several followers of My Last Song to ask if they have a preference: Vault or Lifebox? Early votes cast indicate Lifebox will win.

So it seems that we will now have to change all references to the Vault to Lifebox, and see if this title welcomes people in, rather than scaring them away.

Of course, there’s nothing scary or unpleasant in the My Life Song Vault – just useful sections to help you put your affairs in order and store your memories.

But names are important.  Would the Mars Bar have been successful if it was called the Uranus Bar? And there was a good reason why Lever Brothers ditched the washing powder called Omo.

I’m feeling rather pleased that I visited my father last weekend. I showed him how to use the Vault within My Last Song.  He’s well into his 80s and slowly getting more confident when using his new laptop.

It was initially a rather demoralising exercise, as he found the Vault difficult to understand.  Within a minute or two I realised what a great opportunity this was to improve how the Vault looked and worked.

So I came into the office on Sunday evening when I got back (this is what the founders of newly launched companies do – what are holidays? what does ‘having a day off’ mean?) and simplified some of the copy.

On Monday morning I fed back my findings to Jamie, the techie genius I’ve been so fortunate to hire, and within a few hours we were discussing the new look Vault. Last night it was up on the website (take a bow, Jamie).

A dear friend of mine, Stephen Bubb, wrote a blog in praise of My Last Song and the Vault, and that was before the Vault was improved so he’ll be even more impressed now…and he’s a hard man to impress.

For those of you who want the ‘elevator pitch’, the Vault is where you store the information needed by your family and executor once you fall off the perch; and also where you can put the personal details, images, secrets, life history, achievements, family and friends so that future generations can gain an accurate and unique insight into your life and times.  A promise of digital immortality, no less.

We have made it as easy to use as possible. The Vault has a number of sections, each with its own heading including Funeral wishes; My Details; Secrets; Obituary.  Within these sections are content boxes for the relevant subsections in which information is stored.  It can be accessed and amended at any time, but only by the Vault owner.

Vault owners send their executor or next of kin a second key which allows time delayed access. When the second keyholder opens the Vault he or she can read but not alter the contents.

Whether you want to ensure your final affairs are in order so that your loved ones don’t have to worry when you die, or whether you like the idea of digital immortality, do try out the Vault. It’s free for 30 days.

And, if like dear old dad, you find things in the Vault that could be improved, let me know. Jamie will love you.

Advice I never forgot: I was 17 and had finally plucked up courage to ask a lovely student nurse to come to a local dance with me.  To my surprise and delight, she accepted. That Saturday evening I spent a lot of time on my appearance…I was after all a mod, and everything had to be right. I came downstairs looking pretty sharp, and dad gave an appreciative look.

“Got a date?” was his rhetorical question. I told him I was going out with a student nurse. He made sure mum was out of earshot and said to me: “Son, there are only three certainties in life.”  He paused for effect and came close to lower his voice…”tax, death and nurses.”

I won’t tell you whether he was right or not. But I will tell you that since that evening I have had an everlasting admiration  for nurses, not as girlfriends, though I’ve had one or two since then, but for the quality of care they give to their patients.

I have particular respect for the nurses who look after the patients at a care home in Streatham where a friend of mine has been looked after since her stroke five years ago.  But their level of dedication, their strength, kindness and patience is replicated in care homes, hospitals and hospices up and down the country, and includes those who visit their patients in their homes.

It must be particularly difficult to care for and nurse patients who are suffering the late stages of dementia, when there is so little communication between patient and nurse. The patient is usually just a shell of a person, and that shell can be very difficult given the sometimes aggressive behaviour, or if medicated, someone with little or no response to any stimulus.

Late stage dementia patients have no short term memory, but can often recall things that happened  many years ago.

The section in the Vault within My Last Song for favourite fives – where subscribers can list their favourite five of anything (examples could be cars, operas, authors, Motown songs…) could be something that is particularly useful for prompting the memories of later stage dementia sufferers.

A close family member could give the printed out favourite five pages to the care home so that the nursing staff, and other medical professionals, have a prompt that could stimulate some meaningful communication, experiences that mean so very much to the patient…the rare but special moments when they come alive again.

And if this makes the experience of the nurse that much more rewarding and fulfilling, so much the better.

The launch of my website, My Last Song, and the publication of the Good Funeral Guide highlight the change in society’s view of funerals and planning for death.

I started My Last Song because I believe people should plan their own funerals, not leave it to grieving loved ones or to funeral directors who are likely to make the wrong choices.

The Good Funeral Guide, like My Last Song, empowers consumers with information.   “It is the first independent consumer guide and shines a spotlight on the secret world of the undertakers,” says author Charles Cowling, who also makes the following perceptive remark which has the added benefit of being an excellent sound-bite:

“The baby boomer generation reinvented youth culture; now they are reinventing death culture by reclaiming funerals from the undertakers and ministers and re-casting rituals for their dead.”

I hope the traditional one-size-fits-all funeral is finished, for it is a poor way to say goodbye to a loved one, or to be remembered by.

Instead we should recognise the virtues of the new funerals for a secular age.  As Charles points out the ‘new’ funerals should have some or all of these five features:

• celebratory – preferring gratitude to gloom, laughter to lamentation;
• personalised – a funeral as unique as the life lived;
• participative – the involvement of family and friends in caring for the body and creating their farewell ceremony;
• secular or spiritual – rejecting orthodox religious rituals; and
• iconoclastic – quirky music choices, outrageous dress codes.

Charles rightly argues that people attach little or no value to a traditional funeral because they get so little out of it and “resent paying what it would cost them to buy a decent second hand car.

“Only when they experience the transformative powers of a more relevant and personal funeral will they embrace a more positive attitude to death and how a person’s life is commemorated.”

Traditional religious funerals are less likely to achieve this if chosen by the family of the departed loved one because it seems the ‘right thing to do’, or it is the assumed default of the funeral director.  A decreasing proportion of our society have religious beliefs so it makes little sense to assume that a religious funeral is an appropriate ceremony around which family and friends mourn and remember a loved one.

As I argue in Honesty At The End, it is dishonest to organise a religious funeral for a dead loved one who had no religious beliefs to appease other members of the family.

The best way to avoid this is to plan your own funeral and ensure your family and executors know your wishes.

Which  is what the Vault section of My Last Song is for…safe storage of the details that the family will need once you have died, and for much longer if you want future generations to have an insight to the sort of person you were and the life you led.

Charles agrees: “Planning ahead is a responsibility we shouldn’t duck. To ignore death means we won’t have the ending we deserve, and our loved ones will be left to sort out the mess at a time when they are shocked and grieving.

“But if the funeral is a positive, unique and memorable event, the family will feel they are getting financial, emotional and spiritual value.”

How do I make the digital scrapbooking community aware of My Last Song?

The digital Vault area on the website is a secure storage area for people’s memories, and people’s scrapbook pages would be perfect to be stored in their Vault so that future generations of family and friends can access them.

The Digital Scrapbook Artist 2 software from Serif makes advanced scrapbooking easy to achieve.  Thousands of people enjoy scrapbooking and it is an increasingly popular activity, thanks to the advances in computer software.

And the purpose of scrapbooks is to create visual memories by using images of family, friends, pets, places, things…anything that is important in our lives.

It is vital that these are saved and stored safely, and can be accessed by loved ones in the future.  Which sums up the purpose of creating the My Last Song Vault.

So scrapbookers, put your pages in your Vault, along with other personal information that you want loved ones now and in the future to access.