Thanks for Asking: Unsolicited Advice on How to Live

The other day Second Daughter asked me what I'd be thinking about on my deathbed: more about myself, perhaps reflecting back on my life, or more about others, telling them things I meant to tell them before.

Cheerio, happy talk!

I thought a bit, threw in a few criteria for variables (am I alone or do I have visitors? Going fast or going slowly?), and decided I'd probably be sharing things I meant to tell them sooner, maybe some things I'd learned because I want to spare them my hard lessons.

"Won't you be telling us those things all along?" she asked. (I'm sure it feels as if I offer up enough advice on a daily basis.)

"Well, yes, but you learn things all the time and I'll be reflecting back with the perspective of more years than I have now." (Knock on wood.)

As if having two daughters didn't tax my unsolicited-advice-giving reflexes enough, I blog on the topic every so often.

To save them time when I'm gone and they wish they'd paid more attention to my wisdom while I was alive (hint hint), here's a round-up of past posts on Life and Important Stuff:

• The SISO Method for Life Management
• Don't Buy That Case of Stuff on Sale. I'm Serious.
• Yet Another 11 Little Secrets
• Stuff I Didn't Do Today, Or, I Know What Happiness Tastes Like
• 3 Things My Mother Taught Me

Postscript: Eldest Daughter wandered in while I was working on this post. She mentioned something about life or dying and I said I was writing a blog post about that. 

"You're writing a blog post in preparation for your death? How morbid!" 

The conversation took other turns, but then she looked over my shoulder as I uploaded the graphic. "You ARE writing a blog post about your death! Shouldn't you be updating your will instead?" 

Me: "Well, that isn't self-interest talking." 

Her: "What? I can't wear your shoes, we have different taste in furniture, I don't like your curtains, I don't want your money--what are you going to leave me?" 

She glanced around the room, clearly looking for something worth having in memoriam, and spotted the bookcase. "Candles! And CDs." (She already has most of my book collection in her room.)

Macbeth, Act V, Scene V:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

to the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fool

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Or Macbeth, Act III, Scene IV:

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light: Phrases not to use in my obituary

Get real. People die. Do it all the time. Right now, this very minute.

But usually not in the obituaries, nosirree bob. What happens there, according to my hometown paper, is that people:

• Pass away, sometimes peacefully/ at home/ with family at one’s side/ following a courageous X-year battle with [disease name here]
• Go to be with our Lord, or with our Lord and Savior (in our town, at least since I started paying attention, no one has gone to Paradise, attained moksha or nirvana or samadhi, or moved on to any other non-Christian afterlife destination)
• Enter into rest
• (or, more dramatically and definitively) Pass into eternal rest
• (with more detail about how they qualified for the rest) Peacefully are set free and enter into an eternal rest
• (in fiestier mode) Fight [disease name here] successfully for X years but finally succumb

Today was an exception to the general DER (Death Euphemism Rule). Four people actually up and died, according to their obituaries. (For a much more entertaining short list of euphemisms with a lot more down-home flavor, see this page.)

Writing obituaries is an art, as observed by a writer for the Washington Post. There’s even a study about the obituary from which I learned that obituary publishing site Legacy.com is one of the 100 most visited on the Web. Who knew?

I read the obituaries every so often. Not just to find out whether I’m listed so I can get on with my day, as Benjamin Franklin once observed.

Sometimes I mean to scan the page quickly, but something catches my eye: someone dies quite young, or at an extremely advanced age, or has the same last name as someone I know, or has an especially appealing twinkle in the eye in whatever photo the survivors chose.

Sometimes I read every last one in a kind of silent homage to the lives they led, whether they were World War II veterans like my dad (still alive at 92), a woman who spent most of her life in Catholic orders, or a good ol’ boy who loved hunting, fishing and hanging out with his buddies (they may even name a favorite tavern where he’ll be missed, in this type).

Life companions, remarriages, children and grandchildren and stepchildren, work lives and military service—an entire life captured in a couple of hundred words.

Families pay for the obituaries I’m reading and presumably provide the information. I like it best when it feels like a truly well-rounded view of the person, not just the shiny outer shell. If I get a sense that the person loved to laugh, formed lasting friendships and left behind a family that will miss him or her, that tells me more about a life well lived than honors and awards.

What makes it harder right now is that I have a friend who is dying. When that obituary appears, it is one that will make people say, "Oh, so young!" and "I didn't even know she was sick."

I'm close enough to have visited her in these days of winding down, but so many people would be on a "short" list for phone calls that I may not know she has died until I read it in the paper.

That gives this section more weight every day, and I know that no matter how wonderfully it's written her obituary will not capture all her strength, grace and beauty. I don't think she would opt for the euphemism, but that's not my call.

As for me, I suppose that thanks to my time as an elected official I might rate an actual article, not a paid piece that my family has to come up with while they’re still grieving (I assume—you’d miss me, right?). But that would focus on the externals of public service, not on whether I was a decent mom to my kids and stepchildren, a friend you could rely on, a generally good person, kind, or a great cook J.

When I first started blogging I stumbled across a timeline site, Dipity. I started building my life chronology, although I also noted in a blog post that life isn’t just chronology.

It will do as well as anything for that official business of what/when/where, so can my obit (written many, many years from now, I hope) say a little more about the why and the who? And you can just say that I died. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
Mary Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.