Why Did We Make Coda?

Over the course of many years of working with people in our community, we came to understand that there was something really important missing from the way we go about planning for our death and ageing. Over the years, we have worked to understand the underlying problem and have directed our efforts toward creating a tool to address it. The result of that work is Coda.

What we discovered is that this “thing” that is missing for so many people is participation in their own mortality; courageously engaging with it in a meaningful way that accepts the role that death – that ultimate and undeniable end to our lived experience – actually plays in our lives and how death is experienced by the lives that continue on. When we approach planning for death and ageing from this perspective, as opposed to treating it like another item on life’s “to-do” list, we know that the experience and the outcome are different. Instead of having a piece of paper, we change who we are – become people with a greater capacity to seek out the things in life that truly matter. With this awareness, we are able to prepare for our death and ageing in a way that is meaningful and reflects who we really are.

Coda is a tool that is designed to teach you to approach your death and ageing with the level of care and attention that aligns with how deeply these experiences actually affect our lives. It is a framework – a way of thinking – that can help you put these values into practice. Coda isn’t just a checklist or a manual. It’s a philosophy and a metaphor to help guide you in living a life more aligned with these values.

Coda is a work in progress, but we believe it is too valuable not to share while we work on deepening what it can be. While we develop further materials, we offer you this framework (the Coda Keys and their associated prompts) to start engaging with important questions related to your death and ageing.

We are working to develop further explorations of Coda, and hope you’ll join us when we have more to share. Visit the Coda page if you’d like to sign up for updates.

Welcome to Coda!