What Happens After Your Dad Dies That No One Prepares You For

The Conversation Nobody Was Having — So We Started It

Most grief resources hand you the five stages and send you on your way. But nobody mentions the password-protected iPad you can't get into, the garage packed with "useful" junk that somehow feels sacred, or the wave of grief that hits you out of nowhere in the middle of a hardware store. That's the gap Dead Dads was built to fill.

Hosts Roger Nairn and Scott Cunningham both lost their fathers. They looked for the conversation they needed and couldn't find it — so they built it themselves. As Roger put it in a January 2026 blog post: "We started it because we couldn't find the conversation we were looking for." The show covers the full, messy, unfiltered reality of losing your dad, including the parts most people skip entirely.

What the show actually covers

Dead Dads goes where other grief content won't:

• The practical landmines — estate paperwork, locked devices, financial vulnerabilities, and logistical chaos that arrives before the grief even settles in
• The emotional ambushes — the triggers that hit years later, the guilt about your relationship, the strange experience of still hearing your dad's voice
• The social pressure — being told to "man up," being handed the role of "man of the house," and all the ways the world gets it wrong
• The longer arc — what it means to lose the person whose approval you were still working for, and how life reorganizes itself in the years after

In posts like "Why Standard Grief Advice Feels Useless When Your Dad Dies" and "Man Up Is the Worst Advice You'll Get After Your Dad Dies," the brand goes deeper into why conventional wisdom fails men — and what honest conversation actually looks like. Episodes feature real guests sharing real stories, from John Abreu, who received the call and then had to tell his own family his dad was dead, to Greg Kettner's raw account of his grief journey.

This isn't therapy. There's no clinical framework, no forced optimism, and no tidy resolution. It's peer-to-peer, honest, and occasionally darkly funny — because sometimes that's the only way through.

Six Things Dead Dads Covers That No One Else Does

From the first horrible hours to the grief that resurfaces years later, here's what you'll find on the show and in the community.

• The Immediate Aftermath — The hours and days after your dad dies are chaotic in ways nobody warns you about. Dead Dads covers "The Day My Dad Died: An Honest Account of Those First Horrible Hours" — the shock, the logistics, and the strange emotional numbness that descends before the grief fully arrives.
• When Everyone Goes Home — The funeral ends and the world moves on — but you don't. The show explores what happens in "After the Funeral: How to Build Real Support When Everyone Goes Home," tackling the loneliest phase of loss that most grief content ignores entirely.
• The Practical Chaos — Password-protected iPads. Garages full of junk. Paperwork marathons. Financial landmines. Dead Dads treats the logistical reality of loss as seriously as the emotional one — because the two hit you at the same time.
• Grief That Hits Years Later — Loss doesn't follow a timeline. "Why Your Dad's Death Still Hits Hard Years Later and What to Do With It" addresses the grief that resurfaces long after the world expects you to be "over it" — and why that's completely normal.
• The Pressure to Be the Man — Sons are handed impossible expectations after a father dies. Posts like "Stop Trying to Be the Man of the House After Your Dad Dies" and "After Your Dad Dies, You Stop Knowing What You're Working For" confront the identity crisis that no one prepares you for.
• The Unexpected Stuff — Still hearing your dad's voice? Dreading going back to your childhood home? Feeling unexpectedly free — or guilty about feeling free? Dead Dads covers the experiences that feel too strange to say out loud, and names them as normal parts of grief.

What Listeners Are Saying

Real reviews from men who found the conversation they couldn't find anywhere else.

Dead Dads, By the Numbers

Available wherever you listen — no gatekeeping, no subscriptions, no clinical intake forms.

9 Platforms

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, PocketCasts, Castbox, PlayerFM, and Podchaser — wherever you already listen.

2 Hosts Who've Been There

Roger Nairn and Scott Cunningham both lost their fathers. This isn't research — it's lived experience.

Real Guests, Real Stories

No PR pitches. No polished bios. Guests like John Abreu and Greg Kettner share the unfiltered truth of what losing a dad actually looks like.

One Rule

"Death. Jokes. Closure. Not always in that order." — the only framework you'll find here.

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From the feed

• The Day My Dad Died: An Honest Account of Those First Horrible Hours — Directly covers the immediate aftermath of a dad's death, which is the core topic of this page.
• After the Funeral: How to Build Real Support When Everyone Goes Home — Addresses what happens after the funeral when others leave — a key unexplored phase of paternal loss.
• Why Standard Grief Advice Feels Useless When Your Dad Dies — Challenges conventional grief advice that fails men after losing a dad, directly extending the 'no one prepares you' angle.
• Why Your Dad's Death Still Hits Hard Years Later and What to Do With It — Explores why grief from a dad's death resurfaces years later, a continuation of the unprepared aftermath.
• Stop Trying to Be the Man of the House After Your Dad Dies — Addresses the unexpected social pressure placed on sons after a dad dies, something few are warned about.
• Man Up Is the Worst Advice You'll Get After Your Dad Dies — Confronts the harmful 'man up' advice men receive after losing their dad, fitting the unprepared experience theme.
• After Your Dad Dies, You Stop Knowing What You're Working For — Captures the existential disorientation that follows a dad's death, something most people aren't prepared for.
• Living Without His Approval: The Unexpected Freedom After Your Dad Dies — Explores the unexpected emotional freedom that can emerge after a dad dies, an outcome few anticipate.
• You Still Hear Your Dad's Voice. That's Not Crazy. That's Grief. — Addresses the surprising and often unexplained experience of hearing a deceased father's voice during grief.
• Why Going Back to Your Childhood Home After Your Dad Dies Wrecks You — Describes the unexpected emotional devastation of returning to childhood home after dad's death.
• The Financial Landmines of Grief: How to Protect Yourself When You're Most Vulnerable — Covers the financial vulnerabilities that arise after a parent dies, a practical aftermath few are warned about.
• The Grief Guilt Trip: Why Feeling Bad About Your Relationship With Your Dad Is Normal — Explores guilt about the father relationship after death, a common but rarely discussed aftermath emotion.