This Emily Dickinson poem came across my desk recently. No doubt it was part of a misplaced homework assignment. Still, I was reminded of the power of this poem where the writer, as a dying person, takes a carriage ride through about five poetic stanzas on earth and then in the last stanza “surmises” to be off to eternity.

My father was diagnosed several months ago with stage four pancreatic cancer. So when I read the poem, I couldn’t help but imagine the carriage had stopped for my father on the day we found out that the shadow on an x-ray was actually an inoperable, aggressive pancreatic tumor.

After many tests, it seemed like all medical science could do was preserve his quality of life.

Dickinson’s amazing poem is concerned with what is happening inside that carriage, to the dying, and the focus is not on the loved ones watching it go by. Still, it made me think of my own extended family. With all due respect to the person facing imminent death, something significant happens to the loved ones, too.

It took a 30-second Google search to find the appropriate words for our suffering: anticipatory grief. This is the grief experienced by others who are anticipating a death of a loved one.

Obviously, we will all face death ourselves, and finding a way to cope with that inevitability is important. Still, we will likely face grief and—in particular, anticipatory grief—more than once in our lifetime.

I realized there are some things my family has learned in this journey that are worth sharing. Here are some of them:

LIVE WITH YOUR AFFAIRS IN ORDER AND PROMPT YOUR LOVED ONES TO DO THE SAME.

No one likes to think about death, but it is inevitable. If you die suddenly without advanced directives or a will in place, then the details of what happens with your estate or belongings or your children will be left to your loved ones during what may be one of the most difficult times in their life.