How to ensure that a script is receiving messages from others

I was wondering if there is way to confirm that a script receiving a message has received it OK. Short of changing and sending a Boolean in the receiving script, etc., is there more of a core C# or software engineering method of doing this?

The reason I ask is because I have come across a few instances when coding whereby I have to send a message to an object that is about to be destroyed, and I would like to confirm that it has received it.

Example, I shoot an object that will destroy itself when its health reaches 0 (in a standard Enemy script). Just before the script destroys the object, I would like to send a message to another script/object to tell it that the object is about to be destroyed so that it can react in the correct way. However, sometimes it will get destroyed before the message can be sent. I have worked around this by delaying the Destroy command by a small amount, but this seems very crude to me, so prefer a more elegant solution if possible.

I'm sure there a method where I can send the message to a third script somewhere else in the scene which can be checked, but wanted to get a feel of what the standard practice is here, both with instances like this and for message confirmation.

Thanks