Asking the Hard Questions About a Loved One’s Final Wishes in Lake City, FL

At some point, as your parents or other loved ones get older and fall into ill health, you are going to have to have serious and potentially difficult conversations about their last wishes, particularly with regard to funeral and burial information. Hopefully they will have already settled most of their affairs for their estate with an official estate plan, including a will or a trust, that will handle the distribution of their assets. However, this plan may or may not include their wishes for a funeral.

This can be an understandably stressful and difficult topic to bring up. Nobody wants to spend much time dwelling on their own mortality, and a person who is close to death may have a difficult time embracing that reality. It’s also not something anyone should expect a person to convey as their last words. However, getting your loved one’s wishes before they pass is important so you can create a funeral plan that honors their memory and helps survivors avoid arguments about what their loved one’s last wishes would have been.

With this in mind, here are some tips to help you have the conversation with your loved one about their final wishes in Lake City, FL:

• Remove stress as much as possible: While it’s impossible to completely eliminate any element of stress from this type of conversation, there are some things you can do to set yourself up for success. Always choose a neutral setting, and keep a calm demeanor when talking about it. Try not to make it seem like a bigger deal than it has to be.
• Be sure to listen: However the conversation goes, make sure that you are actively listening to the person you’re talking with. Perhaps they’ll be very receptive to the conversation and it will all go smoothly, but you should also be prepared for certain topics to generate more severe reactions, including anger or extreme sadness. Let the other person speak their mind and display their emotions as they feel it’s necessary.
• Don’t push it: If now doesn’t seem to be a good time to continue the conversation, or if you reach an impasse, you can move on if it starts to get uncomfortable. You might find that the other person will continue thinking about the conversation after it’s over and be more ready to approach certain topics again after some time to think things over by themselves. This is natural—some topics just take some more time to think through.
• Find ways to bring it up naturally: If your loved one says they’d like for you to have something after they’re gone, you can use that moment to transition into other things they’d like to pass on, or other wishes they have, and it will feel much more natural than you springing the conversation on them without much advance warning.

These are just a few examples of some of the ways in which you can have a more effective conversation with loved ones about their final wishes in Lake City, FL. Contact the professionals at ICS Cremation & Funeral Home today for more tips.

Categorised in: Funeral Plans

This post was written by Writer