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.

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

Maybe we’re all obituary writers. And our job is to write the best story we can now.”

The feelings his annoyance elicited in me. I was suddenly twelve years old. How is it we never escape family?

“The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is the Stephen King of bridges.

What is it we remember of a life? From those 28,000 days if we are lucky enough to live that long? Those 960 months? What was Molly Donnelly remembering as she drove home that afternoon? Surely our days are measured in small things, small connections, small thoughts.

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

“You have a wound,” she said. “If it was a cut, you’d have put Neosporin on it, a Band-Aid. But you did nothing and so it festers. You and me and a billion others. We walk around with these deep wounds that alter how we think and what we say, the relationships we have, who we trust, the decisions we make. That keep us from really living.”

“We hold the past in our body,” she said. “It never forgets. But it can learn to let it go.”

What death dares us to do, is celebrate it. To celebrate the gift of life in its fleeting face.”

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