I’ve read obituaries for about 35 years and would guess that’s a much earlier start than my contemporaries: people in their fabulous fifties. Since learning I couldn’t be a lion when I grew up (see “Bending Time and Growing Young” entry for background), I thought I better check into what adventures I could experience and get a handle on how best to live them. There’s no better place to start that exploration than reading obituaries and autobiographies; what else is a great obituary but an abbreviated autobiography?
This might also explain my life-long fascination with cemeteries and the history buried (couldn’t resist that one) there and evident on some of the headstones’ etchings. In a cemetery on San Juan Island, off the coast of Washington, Pearl Fitzhugh Little will always be known as “Legendary Island Fisherwoman” and each person who passes and reads her headstone will remember as well.
Prior to departing for my silent meditation retreat in India, I traveled to New Zealand for almost 30 days of “tramping” (hiking) on both islands of that beautiful country and thought I should write an updated will. This led to obvious thoughts of my death and from there, to thoughts of what would I want said about my life, if anything, at a celebration of the same.
My will was handwritten and on several different types of paper (my love of books extends to the parts of the book and most especially, hand-made paper) and in addition to the boring legalese, irreverently modified*, of course (Mom always said, “You do things differently.”), specified songs to be played --- Lyle Lovett’s rendition, “Do Not Pass Me By” and “She Wept a Big Tear,” among others --- and food to be served --- margarita fountain (only top-drawer tequila, please) and all entrees Mexican, a la Los Golondrinas or Andales.
And to close the celebration, I wanted the following read:
“I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgment dawns, the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say when He sees me approaching with books under my arm, “Look, she needs no reward. We have nothing to give her here. She has loved reading.” (With apologies to Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group)
For some of the best send-offs of both ordinary and extraordinary persons, see Margalit Fox’s obituaries in The New York Times or check out The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson (Harper Collins, 2006) where Margalit and the pleasures of obituaries are featured.
Here’s just one of her best that I clipped as part of my growing file of what I might grow up to be:
Burt Todd: Adventurer, Advisor to Monarchs
Burt Kerr Todd, an entrepreneur, adventurer and international deal-maker whose quixotic dreams and outlandish schemes more than occasionally paid off, as when he introduced the postage stamp to the tiny kingdom of Bhutan or resold the gently used Rolls Royces of down-at-heels maharajas at a handsome profit, died April 28.
A dazzling raconteur . . . finessed his way into graduate school at Oxford . . . was once treed in Bhutan by a rampaging elephant . . . once tried to found a small kingdom himself, on a deserted coral reef in the South Pacific. Its entire infrastructure was to be built on postage stamps. His dream was dashed, he later said, after Tongan gunboats blew his island paradise to ruins.
Except for the gunboats, all of the above is true, said his daughter.
*irreverently modified examples:
~I, TFJ, formally and legally Patricia (never Pat or Patty)
~share of the property commonly (I like to think it’s more “classically”) known
~I nominate _________ as my executrix (knowing she won’t act like a dominatrix)
~to pay all my debts and taxes, that by reason of my death . . . provided she has first explored to the fullest extent of the law, any and all ways to get out of these payments. Long live the Montana Freewoman’s Association!
~that I am of the age of majority (but still feel only 37)
