Questions to Ask Your Mother Before She Dies
Questions for a mother's last months: her memories and family history, the practical arrangements, and the things that are much harder to ask about later.
The questions
Open any question for the note
When's a good time of day for me to sit with you?
Why ask it
Practical, and it makes clear you intend to come back. Illness reorganizes the day, and her best hours may not be the ones you would guess.
What were your favorite years?
Why ask it
Easier than asking about a whole life. The answer is usually a specific stretch, a job, a street, a decade, which you can then ask about properly.
What do you remember about your own mother and father?
Why ask it
This is the generation that goes unrecorded. Ask about voices and habits as well as names and dates.
Who are the people in these photographs?
Why ask it
Do this while you can. Unlabeled photographs become anonymous within one generation, and naming them is work she can do on a low-energy day.
What was your working life like?
Why ask it
Often the part of a mother's life her children know least about, and one she may be glad to be asked about for once.
What was your marriage actually like?
Why ask it
Ask if you want the version behind the family story. Late answers are often frank, and they may change how you read your own childhood.
What do you remember about me that I wouldn't know?
Why ask it
You are collecting the part of your own history that only she holds. Ask about your first two or three years specifically.
Which recipes and household things should I write down now?
Why ask it
Concrete, achievable, and it produces something you will actually use. Take the measurements as she says them, however imprecise.
What are you proud of that has nothing to do with us?
Why ask it
Steps around the expected answer about her children. Many mothers have an achievement of their own they assume nobody is interested in.
What's been the hardest part of this illness, apart from the obvious?
Why ask it
The answer is often loss of independence, boredom, or being talked over rather than pain. All three can be acted on.
What do you want me to stop worrying about?
Why ask it
Dying parents spend energy managing their children's distress. Asking directly can take some of that weight off both of you.
Is there anything you'd like to see, hear or eat again?
Why ask it
Small and deliverable. A record, a beach, a particular bread. One of the few questions here with an answer you can act on this week.
Who should I make sure knows, and who would you rather I told myself?
Why ask it
Easily forgotten until it is urgent. Ask for names and numbers, and write them down while she can supply them.
Is there anything about our family we've never talked about?
Why ask it
Leaves room for the harder history: a separation, a lost child, a relative nobody mentions. Take what is offered and do not push for more.
What are your wishes about treatment if you get worse?
Why ask it
Ask while she can answer. Ask also whether it is written down, where the document is, and who else has been told, or the decision falls to whoever is present.
Have you made arrangements, and is there anything you want changed?
Why ask it
Wills, accounts, funeral plans. Better raised as a question about her wishes than as a question about money.
What do you want at your funeral?
Why ask it
Plain answers settle family arguments later: burial or cremation, who speaks, which music, whether she wants it religious.
What should happen to your things?
Why ask it
Ask about the few items that have a story or a person attached. Everything else becomes much easier once those are decided.
Is there anything you want to put right?
Why ask it
Ask once, quietly. If a particular person is involved, offer to make the call rather than leaving the effort with her.
What do you want me to carry on?
Why ask it
A closing question that gives her something to hand over. Answers are usually smaller than you expect, which is what makes them keepable.
Practical notes for these conversations
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Timing
Short visits, repeated
Twenty minutes when she is alert beats an afternoon when she is not. Ask her carer or the nursing staff which hours are usually best.
Keep the practical and the personal apart
A conversation about wills and a conversation about her childhood should not be the same conversation. Mixing them makes both harder to finish.
Don't wait for the right moment
Lucid time can shorten without warning. An ordinary Tuesday is a better setting for these questions than a crisis is.
Things to write down
- Names and relationships for photographs, while she can still supply them.
- Where documents are kept, and who else knows: a lawyer, a doctor, a sibling.
- Her wishes about treatment in her own words, and whether they are recorded anywhere formal.
- Funeral preferences, including what she does not want.
- Anything she says she wants a particular person to have.
If it is hard
Silence is allowed
You do not have to fill it, and you do not have to ask anything at all on some visits. Sitting there counts as the visit.
Bring a sibling for part of it
Two people remember more of what was said, and it means one person is not carrying every disclosure alone.
Accept that some questions won't be answered
A refusal is information too, and pressing rarely changes it. What she did say is what you have.