Seated across from the funeral director—a stranger who suddenly held profound influence over the final chapter of my father’s story—I clasped my husband’s hand with desperate intensity. In that sterile, softly lit room thick with the scent of carnations, I found myself yearning for something tangible, something undeniably real. My emotions wavered uneasily between a raw, hollow grief and the kind of disbelief that makes the air feel thinner. I shifted my gaze toward my mother, who sat rigid and pale, trying to anchor herself in composure she didn’t truly possess. Then my eyes returned to my husband, seeking in his quiet presence a semblance of steadiness. Yet an absence loomed over us, silently echoing through the empty chair beside my mother—the unmistakable void left by my father.
Only a day earlier, I could not have fathomed that I would spend my afternoon inside a funeral home, discussing arrangements I had never envisioned needing to make. Just the night before, I had spoken with my dad in our usual way, our conversation warm and easy. We had mapped out our ritual weekly dinner, laughing about whether to try a new restaurant or stick with our favorite spot. When we hung up, I had no sense that I had unknowingly said my final goodbye. There had been no premonition, no uneasy feeling hinting at tragedy, no sign of illness hidden beneath his cheerful tone. So, when the emergency room doctor gently informed my mother, husband, and me that they had done everything possible to revive him but could not—words delivered with practiced empathy yet unbearable finality—I simply could not comprehend them. My mind stumbled over the sentence, refusing to accept what my heart instinctively already knew: he was gone. A heart attack, they said. The phrase itself felt implausible. My father was supposed to have years ahead—decades, even. We had all believed there was still time.
All my life, we had leaned on him to decipher complexity, to provide reassurance when uncertainty loomed. Suddenly, in the greatest confusion and despair of all, he was the one missing. Only three short hours had passed since his unexpected death, and there we sat, tasked with making decisions he had never voiced. We did not even know where to begin.
The irony was bitter because he had always seemed so vibrant, so enduringly alive. I vividly recalled a recent evening at my parents’ dinner table, my then nine-year-old son seated between us, milk moustache bright on his lip. Across the table, my father chuckled, motioning toward the mahogany desk behind him. There rested a tall, crisp stack of white papers—a nearly novel-sized pile—that stood out among his neatly arranged magazines. With his familiar mischievous glint, he asked, “Do you want to read my will?” I remember pausing, startled by the casualness of his question. Dinner conversation about legal documents outlining mortality hardly sounded inviting.
He was seventy-one then, a newly retired man in excellent health, full of vitality and plans. He biked daily, played golf with his friends, and delighted in every moment with his grandchildren. The notion of deterioration—or worse, absence—seemed irrelevant, even absurd. My father appeared indestructible, immune to the frailties of age or illness. He never caught the colds or fleeting stomach bugs my brother and I brought home. He rarely missed a single workday, and seeing him like that shaped my quiet confidence that he would outlast the statistics. My grandparents had lived into their eighties; my great-grandmother had reached the century mark. By that logic, I assumed we had at least another decade, perhaps two.
So I laughed softly and shook my head, declining the offer to read his will. “We’ll have plenty of time for that another day,” I told him lightly. He smirked, teasing as always, “Suit yourself. I nearly fell asleep proofreading the thing anyway.” That was the end of it. We never discussed funeral songs, preferred arrangements, or any of the unsettling details that now, in his absence, pressed so heavily upon us. The papers remained on that desk, gathering a thin film of dust for the year that followed. And then, suddenly, time simply ran out.
These memories collided inside me as the funeral director continued to ask questions in a comforting yet procedural tone. Each query felt like a challenge my mind struggled to meet. Answers slipped from my grasp. My chest tightened; my throat ached. I wanted to vanish—to crawl beneath quilted covers, away from the fluorescent lights and prying necessities of death. Still clinging to my husband’s hand, I forced myself to focus long enough to recall basic facts: my father’s place of birth, his age, even his middle name. But when the question came about his Social Security number, my composure fractured. My mother tried to assist, though her voice trembled and her mind faltered under the weight of loss. All I wanted was to speak to him, just once more—to ask him what to do, to let him reassure me in his calm, steady way. His silence made the task excruciating.
As I looked at my husband, an abrupt thought struck me: one day, our son might sit in this very position for us. The image pierced me with a fresh wave of grief. My shoulders stiffened; my tears quickened. The idea of our child navigating this same maze of uncertainty—fumbling with unanswered questions while his grief still raw—was unbearable. If there were any way to spare him that burden, I vowed, I would.
That night, when the house had quieted and the distraction of condolences faded, I turned to my husband and broke the silence. With tentative resolve, I told him I wanted to document every practical detail about our own end-of-life wishes—for our son’s sake. He looked at me with surprise and murmured softly, “We have plenty of time.” His attempt at reassurance—those exact words—landed with eerie familiarity, echoing my own casual dismissal to my father not so long before. A maternal instinct surged in me then: a fierce need to protect our child’s future grief, to carve out a small pocket of peace for him in a moment that would one day break his heart.
Weeks later, as the initial shock of my father’s death subsided into a quieter, more reflective sorrow, my husband and I continued those conversations in earnest. Together, we composed a list that outlined our preferences—the funeral home we trusted, the cemetery we found meaningful, even a few lighthearted notes about music and flowers. To soften the task, we scribbled affectionate doodles in the margins, wrote each other brief love notes among the logistics, and made sure our will was updated and stored safely. We decided not to overwhelm our young son with these morbid discussions but shared the information with a few trusted relatives instead. My hope now is that these documents will remain untouched for decades to come, resting quietly in my desk drawer, accumulating dust while life continues in all its unpredictable beauty—for many, many years more.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/losing-dad-taught-me-i-needed-plan-my-own-funeral-2025-12
