20 Questions That Will Help You Tell Their Story

When families begin planning a celebration of life, one of the hardest parts can be figuring out where to begin. There are venues to consider, people to contact, food to order, photographs to find, and dozens of other decisions waiting to be made. Before you get too far into any of that, spend some time remembering the person you are celebrating.

Sit down with the people who knew them best and start talking. You don’t need an agenda, and you certainly don’t need perfect answers. The point of these questions is simply to get the stories going. One answer will probably lead to another memory, which will remind someone else of something completely different. That is exactly what you want.

You may discover things you never knew. You may hear a story you haven’t heard in years. You will probably laugh. There may be tears. Someone will almost certainly say, “Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about that.” Pay attention to those moments because they are often where the most personal ideas for a celebration begin.

Here are twenty questions I would start with:

1. What made them laugh, really laugh?

2. Where did they feel most at home?

3. What food or drink will always make you think of them?

4. What music did they love?

5. How did they most enjoy spending their time?

6. What did they say so often that you can still hear them saying it?

7. What family tradition mattered most to them?

8. What place will always be connected to them?

9. What was one of their favorite simple pleasures?

10. What story about them does everyone in the family know?

11. What is something about them that might surprise people?

12. What were they especially proud of?

13. What was unmistakably “them”?

14. How did they show the people in their life that they cared?

15. What did they teach you, intentionally or otherwise?

16. What possession, collection, or everyday object immediately makes you think of them?

17. What did they look forward to every year?

18. What is something they did that made other people feel special?

19. What do you hope people never forget about them?

20. If they walked into their own celebration of life, what would make them smile and say, “You got it right”?

You don’t have to answer all twenty, and you don’t have to answer them in order. You may spend half an hour talking about one question and never get to the next one. That conversation is far more valuable than finishing the list.

Maybe someone brings up the pancakes they made every Saturday morning, which leads to a story about how nobody else was allowed to touch the griddle. Maybe you remember the old pickup truck they refused to replace, the mystery novels stacked beside the bed, the tomatoes they grew every summer, or the ridiculous song they played whenever they cleaned the house.

Write those things down. They may seem ordinary at first, but this is where the celebration starts to take shape. The pancakes might become part of a brunch menu. The garden might inspire the flowers. The favorite song belongs on the playlist. A collection might become something guests can actually explore. A place they loved might turn out to be exactly where everyone should gather.

Not every memory has to become part of the celebration. It shouldn’t. The purpose of answering these questions is to understand the person well enough that the choices you do make have a reason behind them.

When the day is over, you want the people who loved them to feel that they were part of something that could only have been created for this particular person. Maybe they learned something they never knew. Maybe they heard a story they had forgotten. Maybe they walked into the room and immediately recognized a hundred little pieces of someone they loved.

That starts long before you choose the flowers or finalize the menu. It starts by sitting around a table and remembering who they were.