My dad died of cancer when I was only a year old; he had a few weeks at the end where he was still very much alive but knew that he wasn't going to make it, and I always wondered why he didn't do anything like that. Not in a 'how could he have been so heartless!' kind of way or anything, I just always just thought it was a little bit odd. I never asked about it though.

...but then just recently it came up in conversation when I was having dinner with my mum, and it turns out that they did talk about it at the time but he deliberately decided not to leave me anything.

He didn't want to risk passing on any advice or thoughts that I wouldn't then be able to discuss or argue with him about, and was worried that it would be easy for even a simple message from beyond the grave to end up as something I would have to take as absolute gospel for the rest of my life. He trusted my mum to raise me (he was right, she's awesome) and tell me about him down the line, and he wanted me to live my life free of the idea that I was getting posthumous pressure from him to be successful at all costs, or 'live the life he should have lived'.

I wish I'd asked about it earlier, because I actually found that quite touching. Obviously that may not apply to everybody and I suspect he may have been overthinking the whole thing slightly, but the way he thought it through is so much like the way I might do it in the same situation, it's hilarious.