The first seventy-two hours

You will not remember most of the first day. That is normal. The phone calls you make in the first hours will be repeated three or four times each, and the people on the other end will be patient with you. You do not need to be eloquent. You need a list, and permission to stop when you need to.

What follows is the list. It is organized by day, because the work organizes itself that way whether you want it to or not.

Day one: the calls that come first

Start with the smallest circle. The two or three people who would want to hear it from you, not from a group text. A sibling. A best friend. The grandparent who will have the strength to tell other relatives so you do not have to.

Then the funeral home. They will ask, within the first twelve hours, which one to use. If nothing was planned, pick the one closest to where they were when it happened. You can change your mind later. You cannot un-make a decision at two in the morning.

Then the employer. A brief email is enough. Human Resources will route it from there and will not expect a phone call. If a manager needs to know personally, ask a coworker to make that call.

Then the primary care doctor’s office. They can fax records to whoever needs them and will save you a dozen calls later in the week.

If there are children, school, or pets, name a person for each. The neighbour who can let the dog out for the next three days. The friend whose number is in the school’s emergency line. Write the names down. You will forget you assigned them.

Day two: the household and the phone

The house has to be made safe and quiet. If the person lived alone, ask someone to drive by, bring in mail, water plants, lock the back door. If they lived with you, the house is already where you are; the work is closing the small loops the household ran on without telling anyone.

This is also when the phone becomes a problem. Modern phones are designed to keep you safe: Face ID, two-factor codes, the keychain that holds every password. They are also why, on the morning of the second day, you cannot log in to the bank, the airline, or the family calendar.

If the phone has a passcode you do not know, write down what you remember of it before the device locks itself for good. If you can keep it charged and within reach for the first week, do that. The number of accounts that route a verification code through it will surprise you. (We have a separate piece on what to do when the phone is fully locked. It is the most-cited barrier in survivor research.)

Day three: the certificate and the slow paperwork

The hospital or coroner files the death certificate with the state automatically. You do not file it. You will, however, be asked to choose how many original copies you want.

Order fifteen.

Not five. Not “a few to start.” Fifteen. Each one costs fifteen to twenty-five dollars and takes four to six weeks to reorder. You will need an original, not a photocopy, for the life insurance company, each retirement account, Social Security, the mortgage, every joint bank account, the car titles, and the brokerage. We have a separate piece on this; it is the single most actionable thing in this guide.

Day three is also when slower decisions begin to show up: the obituary, the service, whether to gather, who travels. None of this has to be answered today. Most of it does not have to be answered this week. The strongest gift you can give yourself in the first seventy-two hours is the discipline of not deciding the long things until the short things are done.

What can wait

It will feel as if everything must happen now. Almost nothing does.

• The will and probate can wait two to three weeks. Lawyers will tell you the same.
• Closing the bank accounts can wait. Credit cards keep paying themselves through autopay until you stop them.
• The thank-you notes can wait three months. People understand.
• The clothes, the closet, the photographs: wait at least until the second season changes. They will mean something different by then.

What the binder does with this

The Week 1 page in the binder reader is exactly this list, ordered by what is time-sensitive and what can wait. The version a survivor sees does not include grief advice. It includes the number to call, the document the call requires, and a place to check off what has been handled.

That is the whole idea. Not what to feel. What to do, and what to leave alone for now.