I See You've Called in Dead

by John Kenney

What would you write if you had to write your obituary? Today, right now. What comes to mind? What memories, days, moments? What people and experiences? I realize, at first glance, that the idea of writing one’s own obituary while still alive may sound morbid. It’s not, though. I promise you. It’s a needed reminder of who you are, of what truly matters. Because it’s your life and there’s still time to write it. Before I have to.

There was—is—a meaning to the writing of an obituary that transcends the filing of a daily news story. Whole lives. I found it strangely life-affirming, oddly thrilling, this thing where you tried, if only briefly, to capture the essence of someone’s life.

Seemingly small lives writ large—the ones that cause you to pause over your morning coffee, stopping midsentence in the kitchen, the smell of toast in the air, a finger wrapped around the handle of the cup, a vague memory, perhaps, of the last time you saw the grocer/dentist/mechanic—that pull you back to yourself, to the fleeting nature of life, to the shiver-inducing fact that that will be you one day, that it can and will all be taken away, that it can and will end. You bring the coffee cup close to your face, you need something, someone, to hold on to, to ground you, to bring you back to the small moments of life and not the vast, cold universe where death awaits. Best to table that thought. Time to butter the toast now, to make a list, to begin another day with the assumption, the hope, please God, that there will be so many more, that they won’t just end. So your mind, on overload, thinks of the day to come, the errands to run, the meetings, so much to do. Too early for existential dread. But then your wife, your husband, your partner enters the kitchen, heading for the coffee, and doesn’t understand the hug, the intensity of it this early, doesn’t understand that you’ve been reading an obituary and drifted, if just for a moment, to wondering about your own.

This … miracle that is existence. Which we layer with so much. With anxiety and fear and greed and smallness and what’s next and hurry up and I’ve got a meeting and all the … stuff … that gets in the way. I’m not saying we should all go live like a monk. I’m saying that if you haven’t lived the life you want, if you haven’t loved life, then at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you. But if you have, if you’ve lived well … friends and family and … if you’ve lived … then just as true is the peace you feel.

Are we ever fully honest with someone else? I don’t mean to suggest outright lies, but do we really express those quieter, deeper feelings? Those amorphous, hazy things, core things that even we struggle to admit to ourselves. Do we share everything?

‘We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom.’”

See you tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. We have time. Of course we have time. Please dear God.

How do you pray? What are the words? How do you not make it sound selfish? Is anyone listening? Somewhere in the stained-glass-diffused light floated the ancient prayers, the words sometimes said at speed, rote, but always as a fervent plea, Lord, have mercy on me.

“We learn science and chemistry and Shakespeare and history,” he said. “But no intro to death. Isn’t that strange?” I closed my eyes. “Is it?” I asked. “Why would we need to learn something we already know?” “But do we know? I mean really know?”

How rude of the dead to die. How selfish. Wherever they are, no pain, in eternal darkness or wondrous afterlife. And here we are, tears streaming down our cheeks, the knotted stomach and clammy palms, a feeling akin to falling, in a dream that won’t end.

A character in the book is asked what the greatest wonder in the world is. And he answers … He says, The greatest wonder is that every day, all around us, people die, but we act as if it couldn’t happen to us.

I mean, why do we do this thing, wakes and funerals? A sign of respect, of course, for the dead. A sign of respect for the family. But I wonder if it’s also for all of us. Each of us here. Surely it’s a reminder. But perhaps also a call to a state of grace, if only for a few moments. A pause to remember how fleeting our own mortality is.

Life prevails. How strange and wondrous. In the midst of death, life prevails, calls to us, begs us, says, Come, please, don’t you dare waste this precious gift.