My dad died unexpectedly. It taught me that I needed to plan for my funeral ahead of time.

"The day before, I wouldn't have guessed I'd be spending my afternoon at a funeral home. I had talked to my dad that night and made plans for our weekly dinner. When I hung up the phone, I had no clue that was the last time I'd speak to him. There was no inner hunch that doom was on the horizon, and nothing that said he wasn't feeling well."

"Throughout my life, we had relied on him to answer the hard questions, and we desperately needed him now. It had only been three hours since his unexpected passing, and here we were planning his funeral. I had no idea what he wanted. I recall sitting at my parents' dinner table with my then-9-year-old son. He drank his milk while my dad gestured to the desk behind him."

My dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack after a normal phone call and a planned weekly dinner. Three hours later, family members were at a funeral home arranging his service with no knowledge of his preferences. The sudden loss left shock, grief, and a sense of having assumed he would always be there to answer hard questions. Memories of him asking, "Do you want to read my will?" contrast with his vitality and the surprise of his death. The experience motivated planning ahead: I am making end-of-life and estate arrangements while healthy to prevent the same uncertainty for my son.

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