Funeral QuestionsMy parents won't talk about their funeral wishes — how do I even bring it up?
Asked by dandelion_wk ·
Two years ago I organised Mum's funeral with absolutely no idea what she would've wanted: no will that mentioned it, no conversation, nothing. Burial or cremation, I genuinely had to guess. It worked out okay in the end but I swore I'd never do that blind again.
So now I've tried, three separate times since Christmas, to ask Dad the same basic questions. Every time he shuts it down. "You don't need to worry about that." "When I'm gone I won't care either way, so why does it matter now." Once he just got up and put the kettle on, which is Dad-speak for conversation over. He's 74, healthy as far as I know, so it's not urgency making him avoidant. I think he just genuinely doesn't want to think about it.
I don't want to nag him into a fight about this. But I also really don't want to be back in the exact same position in however many years, making every call with zero idea what he'd have wanted. How do you actually get someone to engage with this when point-blank "I don't want to talk about it" is the whole response?
3 Replies
This is one of the most common walls families hit, and "when I'm gone I won't care" is a very normal deflection: it sounds dismissive, but it's usually discomfort talking, not actual indifference. A few things that tend to shift it, based on what I've seen work in practice:
Stop asking it as one big conversation. "Let's talk about your funeral" understandably sounds like a confronting, single, loaded event. Smaller, lower-stakes entry points work better, a news story about someone's funeral, a relative's service you both attended, even "I've been sorting out my own paperwork lately" as an opener. You're not negotiating his death; you're just getting one small fact on the record at a time.
Frame it as sparing you, not confronting him. Something like "this genuinely isn't about you, it's that I don't want to be guessing under pressure the way I was with Mum" tends to land better than anything that sounds like it's about his mortality. You already have the exact true story to use here.
Go first. Tell him you've written down your own wishes (or are about to) and ask if he'd be willing to look over what you've done, almost as a favour to you, rather than asking him to produce his own from nothing. Recording funeral wishes doesn't need to be a big, solemn document. A single page is genuinely enough, and showing him yours makes it a shared, ordinary task rather than something only asked of him.
Lower the ask. You don't need every answer in one sitting. Even getting one preference, burial or cremation, written down somewhere is real progress and takes the pressure off asking for everything at once.
And it's worth naming honestly: some people never come around to this, no matter how it's approached, and you may end up having to decide again without his input. That's not a failure on your part. It just means preparing yourself (and maybe siblings, if you have them) to make those calls together if it comes to that.
Gently pushing back on the framing of "he won't talk about it." In my experience sitting with a lot of families, refusal is very often standing in for a feeling that hasn't been named yet. Rather than "will you tell me what you want," it can help to ask "what is it about this that you don't want to think about," fear of being a burden, fear that talking about it makes it more real, or simply never having had anyone model how to have this conversation with him.
You may not get an answer to that either, the first few times. But it shifts the conversation away from him defending a position ("I don't want to talk about it") and towards something he might actually be willing to sit with for a minute. No pressure on getting it resolved quickly. This is often a conversation that opens a crack at a time, not all at once.
Adding the less comfortable data point, from a different situation but a similar wall: with my own father, who I only really reconnected with to manage his affairs, this conversation simply never happened. Some people take the position to the end and nothing you say moves it. It cost me some peace of mind I'd hoped for, and in the end I made every call the way you did for your mum: best guess, done with care, no instructions to go on.
Not saying that'll be your outcome. Your dad sounds a lot more reachable than mine was, just that it's worth quietly getting your own ducks in order regardless (know where his will is if one exists, know who else might have an opinion, have a rough idea of budget) so that if the conversation never lands, you're not starting from zero a second time either way.
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