Remembering Sherry Brown, the Inspiration for MyDirectives

A Legacy of Love and the Power of Advance Care Planning

Honoring My Mother, Sherry (Tevebaugh) Brown (1946-2025)

By Scott Brown, President & CEO, MyDirectives

Eighteen years ago this month, as we were experiencing the difficult end of life of my maternal grandmother, Shirley Tevebaugh, my wife Géraldine and I looked to the future and had a realization. My mother, Sherry Brown, had already been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and we feared that one day she could face an end-of-life experience similar to my grandmother’s — one marked by repeated hospital visits, transitions between emergency rooms and nursing homes, and a lack of dignity.

We knew we couldn’t let that happen, so we created what would become MyDirectives^® — now the industry leader in digital advance care planning. Our mission was simple but profound: to ensure that patients always have a voice in their care, even in their most vulnerable moments. For nearly two decades, MyDirectives has worked to empower individuals and families to document and share their goals, preferences, and priorities for their medical treatments and interventions, ensuring that care teams can respect their wishes at every stage of life.

Today, we mourn the loss of my mother, Sherry Brown. After living with MS for nearly 40 years, she developed an antibiotic-resistant infection during the holidays. Together with my father — her husband of almost 60 years — our family, and her care team, she made the decision to receive hospice care at home. Thanks to advance care planning, she spent her final weeks surrounded by love, family, and dignity.

Her advance directives and do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order were readily available through MyDirectives, ensuring that emergency department and mobile medical teams had immediate access to her documented care preferences. More importantly, our family was unified in understanding and respecting her choices as to what she did and did not want to happen at the end of her life. On February 11, 2025, she passed away peacefully in her sleep, with my father close by her side — no EMS teams, no ambulances, no unnecessary and unwanted hospitalizations, and no high-cost, low-quality care. It was just as she had wanted.

I can say without hesitation: advance care planning, when done correctly using available technology to support patient-centric conversations and planning, works. Period. Today, my family and I grieve the loss of my mother, but we take comfort in the knowledge that MyDirectives worked for the very person who inspired our company’s foundation — just as it has for thousands of other MyDirectives users, their families, and their care teams. It’s difficult to put into words my pride and gratitude when my own father thanked me for what MyDirectives does to make a person’s wishes clear, accessible, and actionable when it matters most. Even my mom’s medical team thought MyDirectives’ work was impressive and a “game changer.”

For 18 years, MyDirectives leaders have devoted every single day to the people they love — the people you love — to ensure that their goals, preferences, and priorities for their care are documented and accessible anytime, anywhere, so care teams can take their wishes into consideration when choosing what to do — and not do — for their patients. It worked for my mom.

To everyone who has faced or will face similar moments, I extend my deepest sympathies.