The recent loss of my favorite aunt has me thinking about my impending departure from this life. She was single and with no children–until she reconnected with my cousin just a few years back. I see myself in her, a woman living alone, no kids. My aunt had her affairs in order, as they say, though there were still some things left unsaid.
I have a will and a bunch of other exit strategy paperwork, now rendered out of date by my divorce. I have a financial planner to help me recover from the destabilizing nature of my settlement. (I lost close to half my retirement savings. I remain so angry; I look forward to the day when I have shaped that feeling into written words and it doesn’t live inside me anymore.) I have an estate attorney who will help me update everything else–a will, a durable power of attorney, medical directives, what to do with the package I’ve spent this life encased in. It’s a boring and sobering activity, but it’s important. Someone will be stuck with the mess I leave behind; I should make it easy for them to clean things up.
It had not occured to me an obituary should be included in this paperwork. But when my aunt died, writing her obituary became my task. I have a very specific view of my aunt. This is not surprising; I only know certain parts of her life, certain stories she told. Other people have differing opinions of how she should be remembered, their view of her from whatever their relationship was.
No one’s ever suggested I include an obituary with my last wishes. Having written one in accordance to the New York Times’ standards–500 words plus a photo–I think this is an oversight. It’s a question to be asked: Do you want an obituary and if so, what would you like it to say? How would you like to be remembered? Which parts of your story are the important ones?
The memoir I published in 2020 covers a difficult and transformative period in my life. It is not the entirety of my existence and I do not want to be known only for the years I spent wandering the globe in the company of an abusive and bitter Englishman, but I don’t want that stuff scrubbed from my past either. (Clearly. I mean, I wrote a whole fucking book about it.)
I would like to be remembered for my sense of adventure, but I don’t want that to supercede the parts of me that stayed home with a rescue dog during the pandemic. It would be okay with me if there was a line saying I had tried in good faith to find love but my relationships fell apart because I wasn’t going to give a man his way when it was not what *I* wanted, too. I would like it to be known I lived as an artist, a musician, and a writer, but also, built an independent career in a highly technical field. I was bad at gardening but able to grow excellent tomatoes. I was a fearless traveler who embraced far away places but would entertain a trip to Mississippi with the same enthusiasm as one to Madagascar. I was not a good housekeeper but offered generous hospitality and waffles in my disorderly home. I suffered from depression–probably undiagnosed for many years–but could be really freaking funny. I want it to be known I was observant, did not suffer fools gladly, and while I sometimes struggled to land in the right place, I always ended up on the moral side of a decision, regardless if the choice benefited me personally or not.
If my summation for history contains some less than flattering elements, well, I will be dead. My feelings won’t be hurt, I won’t be shocked. People have accused me of being stubborn, elitist, and too much. I reply with an enthusiastic “Hell yeah,” and note to self, perhaps this should be included in my obituary.
Since writing is my job, perhaps this easier for me than the non-writer person. You could leave an outline of what you want people to know. Maybe you were good at tennis and looked smashing in your whites. You were deeply devoted to your family. You learned to fly, believed in God, had always known you were gay, had an addiction to expensive cheese, were secretly a superhero under cover of night… I don’t know.
I wish I had known what my aunt wanted me to tell the world about her. I feel her looking over my shoulder, saying, “You did a nice job, but I can’t believe left out the story about the baseball bat. How many times did I tell this story?”
In writing my memoir, I told a story I’d been carrying around for a long time. It’s too much for the Sunday paper. Perhaps it will be distilled to “Her 2020 memoir portrays a young woman who was forced to grow up in a world that did not care to guide strange girls into adulthood,” and go from there. I’m not done living yet, but if the fates decide it’s my turn, I want to have some say in how the story about me is told.
I’m a big proponent of telling your story while you’re still alive, but if you’d rather wait til you’re not, turns out that’s possible too. If you don’t tell it, someone else will. It’s your story; when and how you want to tell it is up to you.
After my father died my siblings requested I write his obituary. Eventually, I paid $400 to have it published in our regional newspaper in Idaho.
I had taken some liberties in writing it so was expecting to get a call from the newspaper saying, “you know you really can’t say that kind of stuff in an obituary,” but no one called and it was published as written. It came apparent to me obituaries are just another income stream for the newspaper, like advertising copy.
So I set out to write my own obituary. My goal was for a reader to despair of having not knowing me personally.
It’s full of claims, for example, like the time I saved my baby sister’s life by snatching her out of the mouth of an alligator while on a family vacation in Florida.
I also have won many important-sounding awards. Consider the Gastrell Theatrical Appreciation Award. For a chuckle Google Francis Gastrell and Shakespeare.
Write what you want. It’s your obituary. You only die once.
I missed your comment when I first published this, but thank you for this. I love the imaginary awards.