Couple Documents End of Life Preparations Due to Terminal Cancer
They've worked hard to leave their infant daughter with memories.
Published May 19 2025, 10:47 a.m. ET
A husband and wife social media couple shared the preparations they're having to make for one of their deaths, and it's making folks on the internet think about life's beginning, and how its end always comes too soon.
Tanner and Shay (@tannerandshay) have been documenting Tanner's fight against colon cancer on social media in a series of videos.
A recent clip depicts the preparations the two have taken for Tanner's passing, which includes him picking out his funeral plot. The video begins with a recording of Tanner standing in front of a graveyard. He gestures to the collection of headstones as his wife Shay captures the social media post on her phone.
In a text overlay, Tanner writes, "things I've done to prepare for end of life in my late 20s." He speaks to the camera, presenting the wave of headstones behind him.
"Hello," he says to the camera as Shay can be heard chuckling in the background. "This is my future home," he says, with a smile on his face.
Following this, the clip cuts to him and Shay sitting on the grass together. She kisses his cheek and looks to the camera before the video cuts again to Tanner standing outside of a mortuary. "Hello. Today we're at the mortuary. This is where you go pay money when you die."
He then tells Shay, "Let's go pay the money." Inside the building, he begins ambling around looking at different boxes his body can be interred in. "Shopped for a casket (and funeral package)," he writes in another on-screen caption. Tanner then pretends to hop inside a casket, jokingly trying to test it out.
Following this, the couple's video transitions to footage of urns of different sizes on a shelf display.
Afterward, the video then switches over to the couple looking at headstone designs, and they indicate that they designed their own for Tanner's eventual passing. The back of the headstone depicts the Millennium Falcon from the Star Wars series of films alongside a TIE Fighter from the same movies.
A quote reads beneath the fictional space crafts: "Never tell me the odds." On the front side reads the surname "Martin" which rests above two bifurcated natural landscapes. On the left side, there are mountains and trees along with the name Tanner Benjamin "Jiffy" with his birthday, Dec. 22, 1994.
On the right-hand side, there is a depiction of a desert landscape which shows the sun rising over a desert mount ridge. Shay Wright is shown beneath this ridge line along with her birthday, May 8, 1996. Right beneath the Martin surname is a picture of a stately looking building.
"Married Oct. 13, 2018" is right underneath this structure, and beneath the date of their marriage, is a quote. "I love you, Google times infinity, to the sun," the message is capped off with a heart emoji.
The same design is depicted on another headstone pattern, and then the screen transitions to them walking a red carpet.
Tanner is in a suit and Shay is in a lace and sequin gown. They walk the red carpet surrounded by people cheering them on for what they wrote was a "celebration of life."
Furthermore, they showed the steps they recorded how they were "leaving a legacy for [their]...unborn daughter."
Tanner records himself reading out of a children's book to Shay, who is pregnant and lying in bed.
"Recorded books. Made her a bracelet," they write on the screen, and then the video cuts to him hugging a teddy bear. "Recorded an 'I love you' message in a Build-a-Bear." The video also shows Tanner kissing a plate he painted for their daughter. It's one that they created so their kid could use it every year.
They also posted the other ways their daughter could have a memory of Tanner after he dies, like a longer form version of their Build-a-Bear store visit. In another video, Tanner shows off some small baby boots he got for his daughter, where he still cracks jokes, despite undergoing chemotherapy.
Recently, the couple welcomed their daughter Amylou into the world, which they shared with their followers on TikTok here. The video shows photos of Tanner holding the baby along with the gifts they had ready for her when she arrived.
It's difficult not to wonder how so many people take life for granted upon watching Tanner's videos.