I See You've Called in Dead

by John Kenney

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. —Virginia Woolf

Sometimes I wish my first word was “quote,” so that on my death bed, my last words could be “end quote.” —Steven Wright

The good news, of course, is that someone died today.

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

The self-help books did what self-help books often do: go largely unread. But they did act as a catalyst to begin making a list of things I would change, places I would go, hints of the person I would become.

Instead, I waited, a kind of magical thinking, for life to mend itself, for someone to find me. Superb plan, I know.

Aren’t we all more than our résumé? Aren’t we more than the college we attended and the places we’ve worked? Aren’t we a million things that are so subtle and nuanced that most people never see them or experience them?

“There are these nuns,” Howard said. “We ran this story a while back. They practice something called memento mori. Latin for remember that you die. They sit and pray, meditating on this notion, that in every action we should remember, have to remember, that we die. When they were asked if it was depressing, they said no, quite the opposite. They said it makes life so … almost impossibly beautiful.”

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

“She’s very attractive.” “She said she wanted to kill herself.” “My kind of gal. Go. What’s the worst that happens?”

When you leave the funeral, they should give you a pamphlet, a link to a website, something that tells you how you’re supposed to live now.

You’re like a critic. You watch. You comment. But you don’t engage. Because to do that takes courage. It takes vulnerability. The chance we might get hurt. But you’ve had enough of that. You’re so afraid.”

It’s like if you said, ‘Alexa, explain tragedy,’ she’d define it. But it wouldn’t explain the feeling of tragedy. Is this making any sense?” “Of course,” she said. “You’re on the outside, looking in. I know the feeling.”

The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.”

“Mayflies,” I said. “A friend of mine told me a mayfly’s entire lifespan is just twenty-four hours. That gives us, like, five lifetimes.”

Look at the painting. Pretend you’re not you. Let the picture speak to you. It wants to speak to you. It’s speaking to you across hundreds of years. This is its power. It’s trying to tell you something, a universal thing, a thing that has no boundary in time. Why is the girl laughing?” I stared at the painting. I waited. It seemed too obvious. “Because she’s happy?” I said. Tim turned to me and smiled. “Yes.” “That’s it?”

You have to identify the body. You have to go into a room in the basement of Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, Brooklyn, near the Barnes & Noble and across the street from the Five Guys and just half a block from the Jersey Mike’s Subs, where people went about their day as if nothing had happened. No one stopped or bowed their head. There was no moment of silence.

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. I wouldn’t make the same mistake again, even though I wanted to reach out and touch his hand. “You can’t go yet,” I said. “I’m not ready.” I reached out and laid my hand over his.

Death didn’t … It didn’t enter my soul and … leave a mark.”

“And then Tim died. And death entered my soul.

No one tells you about how, in the days and weeks after, when others have moved on, perhaps rarely thinking of the event, the passing, you sit there and think, How am I supposed to live?

I made a mistake. I didn’t kill anyone but myself. And now, apparently, I’m alive again. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with that. I am going to start by stealing a Coke from the kitchen as well as several notebooks and pens for my eight-year-old friend Leo.”

At night sometimes I would call his phone. I would wait for the answering machine message, listen to his voice. After a while I stopped calling. The bastard didn’t answer.

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.

Tim said we are all obituary writers because we get to write our life every day. Write it. Please. It’s your life.