Facing your own mortality is never easy, and one person has found themselves in a particularly difficult situation; her family’s vision of her funeral is in direct conflict with her own desires. After being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and given only weeks to live, she is trying to take control of her final arrangements, only to be met with resistance from her devoutly religious parents.
While her parents envision a traditional funeral filled with hymns, scripture, and prayers, the person wants something completely different: a celebration of life full of laughter, upbeat music, and, most importantly, a cremation that involves a quirky cat-shaped urn. She’s caught between honoring her parents’ wishes and staying true to themselves in her last days.
So, is it wrong for them to insist on her own funeral arrangements, or is she within her rights to plan a celebration of her life on her own terms? Keep reading to see how this heart-wrenching decision unfolds.
A woman, facing terminal illness, wants to plan her own funeral but her religious parents insist on a traditional service
2 months later, OP came back and provided an update:
There comes a painful clarity at the end of life, where a person may realize that the only thing they can truly control is how they leave the world behind and that urge for ownership can become fiercely urgent.
Facing imminent death, the Reddit OP’s desire for a funeral that reflects their real self, loud laughter, upbeat music, cats, confetti, a cremation with ashes given ‘as party favors’, speaks to a deeper longing: to be remembered as their version of themselves, not someone else’s memory of them. Their parents’ insistence on a traditional religious funeral feels like one last erasure of their identity.
Psychologically, this is about autonomy and meaningful self‑expression when time has run out. Research on end‑of‑life care confirms that when terminally ill patients are aware of their prognosis and allowed to make decisions, they report better “quality of death”, including a greater sense of control over their final period, a more dignified closure, and less discord in decision making.
The late psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who studied hundreds of dying patients and popularized the “five stages of grief” (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), recognized that confronting impending death triggers profound emotional upheaval.
Although the model is often oversimplified, its core insight remains: emotional chaos often leads to a desire for control, a way to assert selfhood when everything else is collapsing.
More recent scholarship in palliative care ethics underscores this: terminal patients’ ability to exercise personal agency to define not only their medical treatment but also how they depart the world is a key factor in preserving dignity and reducing moral distress.
In the OP’s case, demanding a funeral that matches their personality might feel drastic to others. But from a psychological and ethical standpoint, it’s a valid bid for autonomy.
They’re not simply rejecting tradition; they’re advocating for a final moment that resonates with who they are. That last assertion of identity, after everything else has slipped away, becomes a powerful act of self‑determination.
If honored, such a funeral could offer their friends and family memories grounded in the person they truly knew: messy, irreverent, alive. It could shift grief from ritualistic obligation into genuine remembrance.
Here’s the feedback from the Reddit community:
This group emphasized that OP was not the jerk and she should have control over her funeral plans and celebrated the idea of making her wishes known to ensure she is honored
These commenters claimed no one was wrong and acknowledged the difficulty of the situation and suggested a compromise, offering advice about legal options
What do you think? Should she go ahead and plan the funeral she wants, or is it more important to appease her grieving parents? Share your thoughts below.
