Why do we know how hard the end-of-life and death process can be? We've been there. And, we were totally unprepared.
Lantern began in the fall of 2018 with one sentence: “I think we need to do something about death.”
Some background: having lost her dad as a young kid, when Liz’s grandmother (her dad’s mom, pictured right) died in the winter of 2018, she was tasked with all of the planning that ensued. She walked into the nursing home where her grandmother lived and was confronted with two police officers, a nurse, her grandmother’s body, and a question of “what do you want to do next?” Needless to say, the experience was overwhelming, complicated, and pretty much entirely unguided.
Liz started asking questions about why a better option didn’t exist and turned to Alyssa, her go-to person for cracking a difficult challenge. Together they started answering that question with “it should and we should build it.”
Today, we have Lantern. Lantern, a public benefit corporation, is a single source of guidance for navigating life before and after a death.