Thanks for bringing this up.

Another helpful hint: leave a list of your passwords so that an appropriate person can update your web site (if you have one), access your email account, and send out an appropriate message to everyone in your address book.

I heard a story that a friend-of-a-friend died, and the only way my friend knew about it was that she looked at the person's Facebook page and saw that it was full of condolence messages from other friends! Even then, she had a hard time finding out what had happened, because the messages were more emotional than informative.