How It Works

A Legacy Dinner brings a person and their loved ones together to celebrate their life while they can be part of the celebration. Around the table, guests share a meal, tell favorite stories, and tell that person what they mean to them. It’s a chance to say the things we sometimes assume someone already knows, or save for a time when they can no longer hear them.

Through Hadley House

My nonprofit, Hadley House, is partnering with local restaurants and chefs to host Legacy Dinners for people approaching the end of life and their loved ones. The dinner is completely covered, with no cost to the person being honored or their family.

There is no requirement to be photographed or filmed. If a family would like the dinner recorded as a keepsake and is comfortable with us sharing it, we can discuss that together. Choosing to keep the gathering private is equally welcome.

At Your Own Table

You don’t need to wait for us to host one, and your loved one doesn’t have to be on hospice. You can organize a Legacy Dinner for an older loved one or someone approaching the end of life, at home or at a favorite restaurant. It can be as simple as a meal with the people who matter most.

Invite everyone to bring a memory to share or a few words about what that person has meant to them. There’s no perfect speech to give. The point is for your loved one to hear it.

If you host a Legacy Dinner and choose to share it online, please tag me, @nursehadley. I’d love to see it and help others imagine doing the same for someone they love.

Why I Started Legacy Dinners

I once cared for a woman named Linda who told me she didn’t think anyone would care when she was gone. Her daughter was caring for her, making her comfortable, doing the small things that love asks of us. But they weren’t a family who easily put their feelings into words, and Linda didn’t know how much she meant to the people around her.

At her funeral, I heard those people speak. They remembered her kindness, the meals she brought when someone’s children were sick, the way she came outside to greet a neighbor. Her daughter stood and said her mother had been her best friend. Sitting there, I remembered Linda telling me that no one would care when she was gone. Now I was surrounded by people whose stories made it clear how deeply they cared. I wished she could have been there to hear them.

That was when I began imagining a different kind of gathering. What if we brought everyone together earlier? What if Linda could have sat among the people who loved her and heard those words herself?

Later, another patient, Will, invited me to exactly that kind of evening. He had lung cancer and had organized a dinner for himself at a little seafood restaurant near the water. He wanted people to say the things they would say at his funeral while he was still there to hear them.

There were plastic chairs and string lights, food being passed around, and friends telling stories. Will laughed with them, corrected their details, and reached for more hush puppies. People cried, too, but they kept talking. He got to hear how much he mattered without having to stop being himself.

Both Linda and Will’s stories are in my new book, How to Let Go. Linda is why I wanted to create Legacy Dinners. Will helped me understand how much joy there could be in them.

Now, through my nonprofit, Hadley House, we’re partnering with local restaurants and chefs to give other people and their loved ones that opportunity, at no cost to the family. A meal together. A celebration of the person they love. A chance to say what they want that person to know, and to hear what they have to say in return.

I hope these dinners bring people some peace at the end of their lives. I hope their families remember an evening when they were able to laugh together, speak openly, and feel close. Most of all, I want fewer people to wonder, as Linda did, whether anyone will care when they’re gone. I want them to have heard the answer from the people they love.