--- title: "Recording a Parent's Wishes Before a Health Crisis: 32 Questions to Ask" description: "Thirty-two open questions for a parent about comfort, care, people and what she wants kept, asked on an ordinary afternoon rather than in a waiting room." author: "The Glow Editors" category: "Ask Them Now" date: 2026-10-18T07:50:34.205Z canonical: "https://tryglow.ai/blog/recording-her-wishes-in-her-own-words-before-you-need-the-paperwork" --- # Recording a Parent's Wishes Before a Health Crisis: 32 Questions to Ask ![a paper with the words parenting and a pen next to it](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1695313486155-6e50afa732d4?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w4OTQwNjJ8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxfHxyZWNvcmRpbmclMjBhJTIwcGFyZW50cyUyMHdpc2hlcyUyMGJlZm9yZSUyMGElMjBoZWFsdGglMjBjcmlzaXMlMjB0aGlydHl0d28lMjBvcGVuJTIwcXVlc3Rpb25zfGVufDF8MHx8fDE3OTE3OTU2NTR8MA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=75&w=1200&auto=format) > Thirty-two open questions for a parent about comfort, care, people and what she wants kept, asked on an ordinary afternoon rather than in a waiting room. Your mother says she does not want a fuss. You have heard it for years, and it has always closed the subject. Then a neighbour is admitted overnight, and you find you cannot answer [the simplest questions about her](/blog/family-emergency-information-folder-checklist). Which hospital she would choose. Who she would want telephoned first. Whether she wants the curtains open. Below are thirty-two open questions in four groups. You are not meant to work through all of them. Choose five, ask them on an ordinary afternoon, and [record the audio only if she says yes](/blog/questions-to-ask-your-mom). None of this is legal or medical guidance, and [none of it replaces a form or a conversation with her doctor](/blog/letter-of-wishes-vs-will-vs-ethical-will). It comes earlier, so that whoever completes the form knows what she meant by fine. ## Make it an ordinary afternoon, not an occasion - **Sit beside her, not opposite.** A car journey, a sink full of dishes, a slow walk. Facing someone across a table turns a question into an interview. - **Give her the reason out loud.** Something like: "I would rather hear it from you than guess later." Avoid any version of "in case something happens to you". - **Ask [before you press record, and say who will hear it](/blog/how-to-record-a-parent-over-the-phone).** If she would rather not be recorded, ask whether you may write things down instead. A clear no applies to the recording, not to the conversation. - **Put something on the table.** A photograph of her at twenty, a letter, a hymn she knows. An object asks more gently than you can. - **Stop before she is tired.** Ten minutes is a complete session. There is no prize for finishing the list in one go. If every attempt so far has met a change of subject, there are gentler routes in to [a parent who steers the conversation elsewhere](/why-your-parent-wont-talk-about-the-past-and-what-actually-helps), and a way of [keeping the subject on her life rather than her death](/how-to-talk-to-aging-parents-about-their-life-without-talking-about-dying). ## Questions about what a good week looks like now - What does an ordinary good week look like for you at the moment? - Which chair, or which corner of the house, do you actually like being in? - What do you want within reach when you are unwell? - Who is easy company when you are tired, and who is hard work? - What would you keep doing even if you had to let other things go? - What kind of help feels like help, and what kind feels like being managed? - Is there a small thing that improves a bad day that none of us know about? - What is the oddest thing anyone in a white coat has ever said to you? **Then ask:** "When did that last happen?" The example she gives is worth more than the preference, because an example still makes sense to someone who was not there. ## Questions about being ill and being looked after - If you were seriously ill, what is the first thing you would want us to know? - If the choice were yours, where would you rather be looked after? - What part of getting older are you quietly dreading? - What would you want a doctor who has never met you to understand about you? - Is there any treatment you would want to talk through before anybody has to decide? - How much detail do you want to be told, and should anyone hear it before you do? - What steadies you when you are frightened? - Which hospital meal would you happily eat again, and which would you send back? **If the answer is short:** ask what made her feel that way. A reason travels further than a preference, because a reason still works in a situation nobody predicted. ## Questions about who speaks and who gets told - If you could not speak for yourself, who would you want speaking? - Have you told that person, in those words? - What should that person refuse to do, even if a doctor suggests it? - Who needs to hear news first, and who should be told gently and later? - Is there anyone you would like to see while it is still easy to arrange? - If two of us disagree about what you would have wanted, how should that be settled? - Which friends should be rung, and what would you want said to them? - Whose advice have you cheerfully ignored your entire life? **Worth adding after any of these:** "Would you rather tell them yourself, or shall I?" The first two questions are where this meets the paperwork. If she names somebody, that person usually needs legal authority as well as her blessing, which is a separate and more formal conversation about [appointing someone to act for her](/power-of-attorney-conversation-with-parents). The rules differ by country, and in the United States by state, so take the specifics from her own jurisdiction rather than from any article. ## Questions about what she wants kept - When we talk about you in twenty years, what would you like us to be saying? - Which story about yourself have you never got tired of telling? - What are you proud of that you have never mentioned to us? - Is there a recipe, a prayer, a tune or a turn of phrase you would hate to see dropped? - What should the youngest grandchild know about how you spent your life? - If there were a gathering afterwards, what should it feel like, and what should nobody bother with? - Is there something you want said to someone now, rather than left in a letter? - Which family joke has to outlive you? **One line to finish on:** "What would you want a stranger to understand about you from that?" This is often where a recording stops being an errand and starts being something the family keeps. Written down and addressed to her children, the fourth group becomes something much older than any legal instrument: [a letter about values rather than possessions](/what-is-an-ethical-will-how-to-pass-down-what-matters-not-what-you-own). It carries no legal weight at all. It is usually the page a family reads most. ## Where her own words actually count Her answers are not a form, but in some places they have a formal home. In England and Wales, the NHS calls a written record of a person's [preferences, wishes, beliefs and values](https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/end-of-life-care/planning-ahead/advance-statement/) an advance statement. It is not legally binding, but anyone making decisions about her care has to take it into account. The NHS lists exactly the material these questions produce: where she wants to be cared for, her beliefs, her daily habits, even arrangements for a pet. The binding instrument is a separate document. An [advance decision to refuse treatment](https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/end-of-life-care/planning-ahead/advance-decision-to-refuse-treatment/) has to name the treatments being refused and the circumstances in which the refusal applies. Where life-sustaining treatment is involved it must be written, signed by her and by a witness, and state that it holds even if her life is at risk. That is law, not conversation, and a solicitor who works in this area is the right person to help with it. In the United States the equivalent paperwork is organised state by state. CaringInfo, a programme of the National Alliance for Care at Home, publishes [a free advance directive form and instructions for every state](https://www.caringinfo.org/planning/advance-directives/), and says plainly that states differ in what they require for witnesses and notarisation. Read her state's form once before you sit down with her. You will see which of her answers the form has a box for, and which ones survive only if a person writes them down. That division is the useful part. The document carries the decisions. The recording carries the reasons, and the reasons are what a family disagrees about at two in the morning. ## The order most families get backwards The usual advice is to begin with the documents, because documents are concrete. Get the directive signed, name the proxy, talk about feelings if there is time left over. Done in that order it tends to fail in a predictable place. A form asks a person to choose between outcomes she has never seen, in wording a lawyer drafted, on an afternoon she did not ask for. She answers to bring the afternoon to an end, and nobody learns anything about her. Ask the questions first. A parent who has already said she wants the window open and her sister rung first is answering a form from somewhere real, and the relatives holding that form later can tell what she signed from what she meant. The recording does not replace the directive. It makes the directive readable. The usual order bends in two situations. If she is already acutely unwell, or her capacity to decide is in question, the paperwork goes first and goes quickly, because an unsigned document helps nobody. And if she raised the subject herself, follow her lead exactly. A parent who brings it up is offering the easiest version of this conversation you will get. ## If nobody asked her in time If she died before any of this was said aloud, the questions still work. Ask her brother, her oldest friend, the woman who sat next to her in the choir. Change the tense as you go: what did she want, what would she have said about this, what did she never stop talking about. Those answers are second-hand and they are still hers. ## Four small jobs for afterwards - **Copy the audio once, properly.** A file sitting on the phone that recorded it is not backed up. Name it with her name and the date rather than Voice 014. - **Separate the decisions from the stories.** One page for who she named, where she wants to be and what she refuses, given to the person she named with her agreement. The stories go somewhere the whole family can reach. - **Ask her who may listen.** She may be happy for her grandchildren to hear it and not her brother-in-law. That is her call, and easier to ask now than to guess later. - **Ask again next year.** Wishes move as health moves, and the second conversation is always shorter. Glow keeps the audio, the photographs and the family's notes in one private place, with her consent and the family in control. It holds the recording she actually made. It will never generate or imitate a voice, and nothing in it can be made to say words she did not say. A labelled folder on two drives does the same job. For something longer, there is a method for [recording a whole life story in stages](/how-to-record-a-life-story-a-step-by-step-guide-for-families). The asking is the only part that cannot be done later. ## What families ask before they start ### Is this the same thing as an advance directive? No. An advance directive is a formal document, and what counts as one varies by country and by state. These questions sit in front of it, and tell you what the person completing that document needs to know. ### She said no. Is that the end of it? Treat a no as a no, and do not negotiate. Try a smaller door another day: one question, often the lightest on the list. Some parents will talk about a hospital meal long before a hospital. ### Should my brother and sister be in the room? One person at a time is easier for her, and stops the conversation becoming a family meeting. Agree beforehand who asks, and share what she says afterwards with her permission. ### What if her answers are not what we expected? Listen without correcting her. The aim is to understand what she wants, not to reach something everyone agrees with. If her wishes worry you medically, that is a question for her doctor, with her in the room. ## FAQ ### Is this the same thing as an advance directive? No. An advance directive is a formal document, and what counts as one varies by country and by state. These questions sit in front of it, and tell you what the person completing that document needs to know. ### She said no. Is that the end of it? Treat a no as a no, and do not negotiate. Try a smaller door another day: one question, often the lightest on the list. Some parents will talk about a hospital meal long before a hospital. ### Should my brother and sister be in the room? One person at a time is easier for her, and stops the conversation becoming a family meeting. Agree beforehand who asks, and share what she says afterwards with her permission. ### What if her answers are not what we expected? Listen without correcting her. The aim is to understand what she wants, not to reach something everyone agrees with. If her wishes worry you medically, that is a question for her doctor, with her in the room. --- Source: https://tryglow.ai/blog/recording-her-wishes-in-her-own-words-before-you-need-the-paperwork