I am surprised I decided to write about this because a few years ago I would have never even considered the idea. As a matter of fact I probably would have said “Ewww, who does that”.
Yet as my life experiences multiply I have come to realize that guess what, it might acutally be a good thing to do.
There are few things people avoid more than the subject of death and all that surrounds it. I get it that no one wants to even think about the inevitable until it smacks you in the face.
About seven years ago my closest friend called me and said ” You are never going to guess what my mother did this week”. My curiosity peaked immediately as my brain went to bad financial decisons, forgetting to put the car in park, falling or any number of things our older parents might have done.
It was none of those. What she said was ” My mother wrote her own obitiuary” and my immediate response was “What?” “Why would she do that?” Her mother is a very practical New Englander and she just decided to get it out the way. It seemed kind of morbid to me. Also no one wants to think about their parents dying even when they are of that age.
Fast forward seven years and I will tell you the one thing I regret and feel bad about is that neither of my parents had an obituary. It pains me to even write that.
My Dad died quite suddenly and we were all in shock and my mother insisted we honor his wishes and not have a service or an obituary. Let me tell you that everyone in the family will tell you what a bad idea that turned out to be for us. I hate to use this word but we truly had no closure. We never got to hear wonderful stories that might have been told by his friends or relatives other than our immediate family or just celebrate his life with those who knew and loved him.
I wish to this day we had convinced my Mom to have a service.
Five years later my mother passed away and we had a joint memorial service and it healed alot of open wounds for our family. We felt we honored our parents with love, great memories and laughter.
I made a video of photos set to music, created a scrapbook of their lives and I wrote the eulogy and delivered it. I did not have it in me to write the obituary and in my fog of trying to arrange everything or perhaps the mistaken thought that only I could write it I did not delegate the obituary to another family member.
It is one of my biggest regrets.
We learned alot from my parents passing. As a result we made sure all of our financial affairs were in order. We bought a smaller house and jettisoned what we didn’t need and decided that would be an ongoing process as it took us two years to clean out my parents house.
We wanted to make things much easier for our children.
Which brings me to this thought. Writing my own obituary is not such a bad idea. One less thing for my children to think about and who knows me better? Also I can make it funny, irreverant or whatever.
It is not a task I take lightly or one I relish doing ( my procrastination gene is already kicking in) but if I can avoid my own children waking up in the middle of the night chastising themselves for not writing it then it is so worth it.
And just so you know I haven’t lost my sense of humor we saw this at a local cemetary and it made me laugh.
Someone thought ahead!
As always Keep Triing,
Jennifer
P.S. If the technology gremlins behave ( which they did not do last week) you too can get this right into to you inbox almost every Tuesday ( a day earlier than everyone else … :)! Just fill out the very annoying pop up in this post!
All grammatical and spelling errors are my gift to you and may you have a magical day or several 🙂
My future obituary is still in draft form and hopefully won’t be needed for quite awhile 🙂
I was recently published in the book ” So God Made a Mother” ( you can order it here) and I am working on a yet to be named novel. My six grandchildren keep me young and my very organized hubby Paul tolerates my very unorganized yiddle ( middle and youngest) self. Opposites do attract 🙂