How to write a legacy letter or ethical will: what to say, twenty prompts, and examples

Jacob, in Genesis 49, gathers his sons and tells each of them who they are. The medieval Hebrew ethical will (the tzava'ah; the twelfth-century letter of Judah ibn Tibbon to his son is the famous one) was a letter from a parent setting out the values the children were to live by, and the form crossed into every tradition that writes: the Roman father's letter, the Puritan's, the soldier's letter home that was only to be opened if he did not come back. Hospice and palliative-care programmes revived it in the 1990s as "dignity therapy", with controlled studies finding that patients who recorded a legacy document reported a stronger sense of meaning and their families a lighter grief. The legal will divides the property. The ethical will says what the property was for, and who the person was who earned it. Families keep the second one longer.

Values: the three or four things you actually lived by, with the story that shows each one, not the word. Stories: the ones only you can tell, because everyone else who was there is gone. Hopes: for each person by name, specific, not "be happy". Forgiveness: asked for and given, plainly. Thanks: to the people who made your life, some of whom never knew. Instructions of the heart: look after your brother; keep the garden; sell the boat. Leave out instructions about the money (that is the will's job, and a letter that contradicts the will starts a lawsuit), grievances (they outlive you and poison the letter), secrets that are not yours to tell, and anything you would not say to the person's face.

1. What did your parents get right that you only understood later?

2. What is the hardest decision you ever made, and would you make it again?

3. Tell the story of how you met the person you loved most.

4. What did you fail at that turned out to matter?

5. Which of your habits would you like someone to inherit, and which would you like to die with you?

6. What did money mean in the house you grew up in?

7. What is the one thing you would never sell, and why?

8. Who helped you when they had no reason to?

9. What do you believe now that you did not believe at thirty?

10. What is the family story everybody gets wrong?

11. What did you want to be, before you became what you are?

12. What did you argue about with the people you loved, and what was it really about?

13. What do you want your grandchildren to know about the world you grew up in?

14. What are you still sorry for?

15. What do you forgive?

16. Who do you want to thank that you never properly thanked?

17. What would you tell each of your children, one at a time, if you had five minutes each?

18. Which day would you live again, exactly as it was?

19. What do you know for certain?

20. What should they do with the house?

One prompt at a time, out loud first, then on paper, then read aloud again to see whether it sounds like you. Short: a page a person is more than most people receive. In your own words, with your own grammar; the letter that has been tidied by a professional reads like a professional. Dated, and redone every few years, because the letter written at sixty and the one written at eighty are both true and both worth keeping. Addressed to people, not to posterity. And kept where it will be found: with the will, with the executor, or in the form below.

A father to a daughter, on the business.

You will run it better than I did, and you will want to sell it in about year four when the bank leans on you. Don't, unless you want to; but don't because you're tired. I nearly did in 1998 and the thing I would have lost was the people, not the money. Keep the people.

A grandmother to the grandchildren, on the money.

There is more of it than you think and it is not the point. Your grandfather drove a bus for twenty-two years and I did other people's books at the kitchen table, and what we bought with it was the freedom for your mothers to choose. Use it for that. If you use it to avoid choosing, I will know.

A man to his brother, on a quarrel.

I was wrong about the farm and I knew it by the following spring and I did not say so because you were being insufferable about it. You were right. I am sorry it took me the rest of my life. Look after Mum's roses.

A letter is read once, at the worst possible time, and put in a drawer. A recording is played at the wedding and the christening and the bad night in February. And a voice that can be asked, that answers the question the letter did not anticipate in the words the person would have used, is the form the practice has been reaching toward for three thousand years. Write the letter. Then say it aloud, and keep the saying.