pre mortem wake

The plasterers arrive today and set about their work with speed and precision. The older man leaves early.
"I won't be here tomorrow" he reports. "I'm going to a funeral. We held the wake before Christmas"
This seems a rather long delay between death and funeral, but he tells me this was a "living wake", a delightful idea, though only available to people whose deaths can be to at least some extent predicted. The idea is not new: I think it comes possibly from "lady death" herself, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, but there is another idea which is similar and maybe even better: the "death day party"

This is where someone is given, say, 6 months to live, so if they end up still being alive on that day, they hold a party in their own honour. I'd kinda like to do this myself, if it turns out to be feasible. The attractions of going out like a light, however, as my father did, seem somehow even more attractive. He suffered a fall while on a cruise ship, leading to a catastrophic brain haemorrhage. He lost consciousness within minutes and lapsed into a coma from which he died 3 days later