Much of the article resonates with what we went through last year and the year before with mom.
We moved her locally into assisted living - because she had it in her mind that that was what she wanted. After 3 months there, when she saw it wasn't for her, we moved her to a life plan community in independent living, which was more appropriate. She passed away just under a year later.
The prepaid funeral contract was welcome - it made things extremely easy not having to make impromptu decisions at a difficult time. I was in contact with the funeral home/cemetery in FL while mom was in her final weeks of in-home hospice here in NJ, they confirmed her contract and what it covered - we paid practically nothing. I was also in touch with a local funeral home at the same time as they were needed to pick mom up, prep, and send her back to FL. The two funeral homes coordinated everything and we just needed to quickly plan a trip to FL for the funeral.
As far as financial affairs, the single biggest lesson is to have named beneficiaries on absolutely every financial account. There is no need to hassle with these, no need to go through probate, it was breeze easy. We had everything settled within a few weeks after mom's passing. Since we had sold mom's condo and car in the prior year, she had no other assets beside her Fidelity accounts, Wells Fargo bank account, and an annuity. Me and sis were joint account owners with Wells Fargo and equal beneficiaries on the rest. I did not even open an estate account. There was really no need - though there were a few refund checks totaling about $200 that showed up made out to the estate, so we couldn't cash those. I sent them back and asked issuers to reissue to me, but they wouldn't cooperate. No big deal, not worth the additional headaches.
Anyhow, best advice is to get things in order way in advance, when you feel there is no hurry.
I was so impressed with how things went with the pre-paid funeral stuff, I suggested to DW (a year ago now) that we look into it.