Death

If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead (or at least unable to communicate). I’m sorry you’re here. This page is meant to reduce guessing and reduce work for the people I love. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace my will, if there's a conflict between this page and my will or lawyer's instructions, follow those instead.

Why this page exists: Memento Mori is something I've thought about my entire life. My fragile and temporary existence has been a constant motivation to create and push myself. I've been inspired by Japanese death poetry, the practice of preparing final words, accepting impermanence, and leaving clear instructions. The compression, the acceptance, the clarity at the end.

First 48 hours

  • Confirm the situation and obtain the required official paperwork (death certificate, etc.), as most institutions below require this.
  • Contact my immediate family; they will know what to do next and can act as the single point of contact for everyone else.
  • In Alberta, the funeral home usually registers the death with Vital Statistics as part of arranging the funeral. You likely won't need to file this yourself, just confirm it's been done and request several certified copies of the death certificate, since almost everything else needs one.
  • If you need to inform my wider community, post a short note somewhere public (see /accounts for accounts I control). Pin it or link it from brennan.day if you can.
  • Immediately archive as much of my public-facing work as you can via the Wayback Machine (its Save Page Now tool works without an account) and by cloning the git repositories below to at least two separate drives/services. Do this early, before sites and accounts can go dark before anyone thinks to preserve them.
  • Please don't rush to delete or shut anything down. Deletion is (mostly) permanent; leaving something paused or dormant while you figure things out is not.
  • I'm currently based in Calgary, Alberta, so Alberta's Wills and Succession Act and Estate Administration Act govern probate here, through the Court of King's Bench (Surrogate Court). If a formal Grant of Probate is needed, my executor can apply through the Surrogate Digital Service.
  • Alberta doesn't yet have a digital-assets-specific law: the Alberta Law Reform Institute recommended adopting the Uniform Access to Digital Assets by Fiduciaries Act in 2024, but it hasn't been passed.
    • In practice, that means access to my online accounts relies on general fiduciary/estate law and each platform's own policies, not a clear statutory right. Expect some friction with certain custodians.
  • When applying for a Grant of Probate through the Surrogate Digital Service, there's an option to request express authorization language covering digital assets (e.g., email, social media) directly on the face of the grant. Ask for this explicitly. Some providers (Google, Meta, etc.) won't act without a court order that specifically names digital assets.
  • Most of the platforms listed on this page (GitHub, Meta, Google, etc.) are US-based and follow their own internal "deceased user" policies rather than Canadian law. A Canadian death certificate and Grant of Probate are usually accepted as proof of authority, but expect the request to go through their standard support process regardless.

Digital estate (accounts, devices, backups)

  • My primary email address is mail@brennanbrown.ca. Most account-recovery flows run through this inbox, so keeping it alive (or at least readable) for a while is the single highest-leverage thing you can do.
  • A full list of accounts and URLs I control is on /accounts.
  • If you have access to my devices, please check:
    • Passwords / iCloud Keychain (saved logins) and any dedicated password manager
    • Keychain Access on macOS
    • Notes app for any important reminders or documents
    • Any 2FA apps / recovery codes (these are required by most services below — without them, expect slower "deceased user" support processes instead of a normal login)
  • If you don't have device access, use each service's "memorialization," "legacy contact," or "deceased user" process instead, see the links below. These almost always require a death certificate and proof of your relationship to me, and can take weeks.

Websites & hosting

  • Main site: brennan.day, built with Eleventy and hosted on Netlify with continuous deployment. See /colophon for the full technical breakdown.
  • Mirror: brennanday.neocities.org is a near-full-parity static copy already live and independent of Netlify (it just lacks serverless/webhook functionality like the contact form and guestbook). If Netlify ever disappears, this mirror can act as a fallback.
  • Source code: primarily on GitLab, mirrored to GitHub and Source.tube. The whole site is plain Markdown + git. Netlify hosting itself is free, so there's no billing risk.
    • The only real risk is Netlify as a company ceasing to exist, in which case anyone with the repo can redeploy it for free on Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, etc. or point the domain at the Neocities mirror. This is by design; plain text survives.
  • Domain: brennan.day is registered via Porkbun for a 10-year term, so it isn't at near-term risk of lapsing. Other domains I hold are split between Porkbun and NameCheap, with DNS/nameservers through Deflect.ca, and those should still be checked for auto-renewal status and a valid payment method. If ownership ever needs to formally transfer, the registrar will need proof of death/estate authority and will issue an authorization (EPP/AuthInfo) code to move the domain.
  • Medium: blog.brennanbrown.ca has nearly every essay is duplicated here too (mostly paywalled), so it's another if the primary site goes down.
  • 750words: 750words.com/person/brennan
  • Social: Mastodon (primary), Bluesky, LinkedIn, etc. (see /accounts)

Self-hosted projects (homelab)

Several active projects run on my own hardware at home: fanfiction.lol, folk.zone, craft.wang, and other small sites at brennan.click, brennan.casa, brennan.page, and brennan.cafe. See /uses and the homelab guide for how these are set up.

  • Unlike brennan.day, these are not resilient by default: if the physical machines lose power, network, or maintenance, the services quietly go offline. That's an acceptable outcome for most of them and you don't need to do anything.
  • If any of them (especially folk.zone or fanfiction.lol, which hold other people's content/accounts) matter enough to keep running, someone technical will need physical or remote access to the hardware, or the data will need to be exported and migrated to a proper host. Check the repos under github.com/brennanbrown for setup notes.
  • Otherwise, a final export/backup of each site's data (before the hardware is powered down for good) is enough.

Practicalities & subscriptions

  • Check my bank/credit card statements or password manager for recurring charges. Domains, 750words, Medium, Patreon/Ko-fi/Buy Me a Coffee (as recipient), and similar. Cancel or transfer whichever ones no longer make sense. Some (like the domain, above) should probably keep running for a while; most others can be cancelled immediately. (Netlify hosting itself is free, so there's nothing to cancel there.)
  • GitHub has a Deceased User Policy (contact GitHub Support with a death certificate) and a "successor" setting I have not yet configured. For now, the GitLab mirror is the canonical, always-accessible copy of every repository.
  • GitHub Sponsors / Patreon / Ko-fi / Buy Me a Coffee: these should be paused or closed so no one is billed for a subscription that no longer delivers anything.
  • Physical devices (laptop, phone, iPad) are protected with a passcode/Touch ID; if you can't get in, Apple has an account-recovery/legacy process for Apple IDs, but device-level data may not be recoverable without the passcode.

What I’d like to happen with my work

From October 2025:

"Please do not judge me too harshly. When I die, please publish my journals. All of them. Unabridged. Even though I know there is so much boring placid writing here."

I would like my work to survive. Preserve and publish ALL of:

  • Every poem (published and unpublished)
  • Every journal entry (10+ years, +1,350,000 words as of August 2026)
  • Every blog post across all platforms
  • Every book (the 9 published + any unpublished manuscripts)
  • Every essay, every fragment, every scrap

Nothing is too rough. Nothing is too personal. Nothing is "not good enough." The work exists for others Make it accessible. Make it permanent. There is a (currently private) repository on my GitHub labelled "meta" (https://github.com/brennanbrown/meta) and a USB drive which both contain all of the above, and are updated monthly.

Write Club

I founded Write Club in 2022 and ran it for three years, but I stepped down as President over a year ago and no longer have any say in its direction. What happens to it now is entirely out of my hands, and rightly so.

From April 2025, during my final month as President:

"Write Club is one of the only things I've ever started that feels like mine. No algorithm. No admin panel. Just people and paper and truth, shaking slightly in their hands. When I die, I want someone to take the email list and whisper poems to it instead of sending newsletters. 'Here is the new work,' they'll say. 'It's all of us. We are the work.'"

I still hope the spirit of that quote outlives me in whatever form the community takes, but that's a wish, not an instruction.

Everything Else

  • Please preserve the writing and code if you can.
  • If something has to go offline, please make an archive first (a git clone / zip of the repository, exported notes, etc.) and share it with my family.
  • Please don't rewrite or "sanitize" my work on my behalf. If something needs to be taken down, take it down, but don't edit it into a different person.
  • The 300+ Medium articles, 9 published books, 3,500+ GitHub commits since 2020. Preserve what you can.

Editorial Guidance

You are allowed to fix typos, grammar, and obvious errors. Organize my work into coherent collections. Write introductions/forewords to contextualize my work. Decide what to publish first. Edit journals for coherence (removing only mundane tasks and repetitive material).

Do not alter my voice or meaning. Do NOT use AI to complete my unfinished works. Do not censor anything, regardless of how uncomfortable you may find it. My work is not perfect, and I am not perfect. But this is all I have to offer.

Contact

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