From Bucket Lists to Living Funerals: Here's How People Are Redefining End-of-Life Celebrations (2025)

Arif Kamal already knows how he wants to die.

“There’s going to be a lot of sports on every TV,” he tells me, completely unprompted. “I’m going to have all my friends from college around me, talking about all of the fun we’ve had through the stages of my life. And we’re gonna have a ton of Cinnabon.”

To be clear, Kamal is not an old man, nor a sick one. He’s in his early 40s, with a bright smile and an infectious enthusiasm that shines even over Zoom. But as an oncologist, a palliative care physician, and the president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, he confronts mortality every day. And he’s determined, insofar as possible, to make his death—whenever it happens—a celebratory occasion.

“Death is inherently sad, because you lose a physical connection to a person,” Kamal says. But he thinks of it as the counterpart to how we enter this world: birth. “You are only born once, and we respect the sanctity of that event,” he says. You’re in a big room, all of your family is around, there’s lots of joy. Yet with death, there’s a lot of stigma and awkwardness and pain. And it doesn’t exclusively have to be this way, he argues.

How does one plan a joyful death, or, if that feels oxymoronic, a way to say goodbye to loved ones on their own terms? Kamal says that many terminal patients, once they accept that the end is imminent, turn to their care team for “permission” to celebrate. “Oftentimes, people are trying to understand: Is now the time?” Kamal says. In those instances, he works to give them information—like what pain management could look like, or how their energy levels will change in the coming weeks and months—to help them determine how they want to spend their remaining time.

Not everyone has the same options, of course. A person who knows they have six months to live can likely do a lot more than someone who is on oxygen in the hospital or in the final phases of dementia. But if the idea of celebration is appealing, there are always opportunities, no matter the circumstances, if you’re creative and flexible, says Kim Stravers, an end-of-life doula and INELDA educator. She recalls a client’s family who wanted to hold a living funeral at home with all of the dying person’s loved ones. But when her client began to rapidly decline, Stravers helped reformat the gathering into a more intimate event, where loved ones came over in staggered intervals to say their goodbyes.

Whether you are thinking ahead for yourself or starting to confront the mortality of your loved ones, there are lots of unique, beautiful ways to acknowledge a person’s death while honoring their life. Here, end-of-life care practitioners share the traditions and ceremonies they have witnessed over the years to help make that process less intimidating.

Setting a Scene

When people are able to spend their last weeks or months at home, Erika Lim, an end-of-life doula and INELDA educator, likes to help them build a “womb” as a way to celebrate their life. In other words, she creates a beautiful, nurturing space around the dying person that reflects their preferences and spirit. “It’s a really powerful way to honor a person as they go,” she says.

She approaches it by asking questions of the dying person (or of their loved ones, if the person can no longer respond): What smells do you like? What would you want the room to look like? Are there sounds and colors that feel comforting and safe? Are you looking for more of a meditative vibe, or do you want lots of people around?

Lim takes that intel and turns it into a reality. “I had a client who loved music,” she recalls. “We built her a room where she had a beautiful playlist playing at all times, and these lights that make you feel like you’re floating.” (She’s had other clients want all Jackson Browne, all the time, while others request silence and white space to keep things tranquil.)

You can transform hospital spaces too. Stravers once had a hospice patient with dementia who grew up on the beach in California. She worked with his family to bring the beach to his room in a facility in land-locked Arizona. They got speakers to cue up the sound of the waves and seagulls, gave him kinetic sand to touch, and opened up sunscreen bottles to evoke the sensory experience of a day out in the sun. Every step of the way, she and the family asked themselves: “What can we do to make this person feel really seen and felt and loved during his transition?”

Making Memories

If your loved one still has the time and energy (if, say, they’re on the earlier side of a terminal diagnosis), end-of-life celebrations can allow for new experiences or tackling a “bucket list” item, says Kamal. That might look like taking one last epic trip with the whole family, having a huge bedside party, or otherwise prioritizing life experiences before it’s too late.

“I’m looking for any opportunity, big or small, to improve someone’s quality of life before they die,” Kamal says. And sometimes, that means supporting patients in their wish to finally get married to their partner. “We’ve done weddings in the hospital room, at the chapel in the hospital.” He and his team work hard to make them as special as possible, no matter the constraints in place—rounding up people from the waiting room or other hospital beds to attend if friends aren’t around that day, ordering a cake at the drop of a hat, finding an officiant. This part of his job is as important to him as the medicine.

These celebratory moments can be intimate too. Collin R. Hanson, MD, a palliative care physician and clinical instructor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, once had an ICU patient who was dependent on a machine to breathe. One day he said that he was ready to remove the mask and just be with his family in his final hours. “All he wanted was some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee,” Hanson says. “That was just a really special time.”

Photography can also factor in. Hanson recalls a recent pediatric patient whose sister came in to do a makeover before a sibling portrait session. In one afternoon, they were able to make a fun experience for the dying person while also creating mementos for the family to cherish after she passed.

“On the pediatric side, we often think about how to honor the memory of a child who is passing,” Hanson adds. “We might have a music therapist come in and record a heartbeat,” which the parents can listen to in the future.

Looking After Legacy

Beyond the obvious questions about estates and wills, the end of life also prompts people to consider their social and emotional footprint. “Just knowing how am I leaving this earth, and what am I leaving behind, is absolutely important,” says Hanson.

Kamal recently helped a patient write 10 years’ worth of birthday cards for their grandchild. He’s helped other patients write letters or make video or audio recordings. “They’re going to cherish receiving that card a year from now,” says Kamal. “It becomes part of your legacy.” Other times, people want the opportunity to share their stories and experiences one last time. “You might find people wanting to gather the children to the bedside and say, ‘I wish I knew this when I was your age,’” Stravers says.

Legacy-making can take unconventionally beautiful forms too. “I had a client who had ALS and could barely speak anymore,” says Lim. Her two greatest loves were nature and her children. So Lim asked if she would be interested in the idea of a “stone letter,” where you select rocks based on how they feel to represent the meaning you want to convey. “I chose some stones, and with the ability that she had to write, she wrote one or two words about each child on a piece of paper. That was her gift to her children.”

A Moment of Reflection

Sometimes you don’t have the privilege of time to plan something for a loved one; the end can come quicker or harder than anyone could anticipate. But there are still ways to acknowledge someone’s life in a unique, meaningful way.

When a patient is in their final moments and might not be fully conscious or aware, Hanson encourages the family to keep talking with them and sharing memories. “Even just the ritual of sharing helps the person know they’re not alone,” he says, while also helping those in the room continue to celebrate that person and process their passing.

“After death, I like to offer a ritual that slows everything down and allows everyone to become present in what just happened,” Lim says. Sometimes she helps families wash or dress the deceased before a wake or burial, prompting them to share memories aloud in the process. “It offers them one last chance to be able to take care of their loved ones,” she says.

Of course, many people take comfort from prayers and rituals for death, which are found in most major religions, whether it’s the last rites of Catholicism, the Shahada and Janazah prayers in Islam, or the Mourner’s Kaddish in Judaism. Rene Roth, M.Div, staff chaplain at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, sometimes shares verses from the “love” chapter of the Bible to mark the occasion. (Love is patient, love is kind…Love never fails.) “Most people use this passage for a wedding,” she says. “I use it at the end of life because it’s a reminder that love never fails, and that even in death, the love continues, and sometimes it even grows stronger.”

Starting the Conversation

Lastly, not to make you squirm, but what about your own send-off? All of the experts we spoke to believe it’s important to think about how you want to go—and to make those wishes known while you still can.

“It’s a common refrain at the end of life for people to say, ‘I don’t want to be a burden to my family,’” says Stravers. “If you are able to make some of these decisions for your death, far in advance, then you will relieve some of the decision-making responsibility for the people who survive you.” That could look like being explicit about how you want to be buried, creating an advance care directive, or creating the exact menu for your ideal last dinner.

Not sure where to begin? Kamal offers this helpful thought-starter: What is your ideal day? “People should celebrate their deaths in the way that they lived, in what a good day would look like,” says Kamal. “If it’s going on a cruise, do that. If it’s with a million people, do that. If it’s with nobody, you can do that too.”

Roth urges everyone to have these conversations ASAP with their loved ones. Approach it by telling your people why you’re interested in a certain ritual, tradition, or plan, why it’s important to you, and what potential issues it might help avoid. She likes to make it as normal as possible. “My kid has grown up hearing about death at the dinner table,” she jokes.

These conversations also offer a unique opportunity to face our mortality. “It’s not optional to die,” says Stravers. Preparing for your death can “reinforce the fleeting and fragile nature of life as we know it, and then motivate us to really live it as well as we can,” she says. And that’s worth celebrating too.