I think about death nearly every day.
It sounds morbid, but when you’ve dealt with it three times in seven months and twice with those closest to you, it moves you in ways you cannot comprehend or ignore or forget. I wouldn’t call it an obsession, more of a daily meditation to process an overdose of reality.
Because we all know we’re going to die, and our loved ones will die, but you always expect to have a much longer history with them than without them.
Writing David’s obituary was truly one of the most difficult duties I had to fulfill after he died. An obituary is a major responsibility: it’s a summary, an announcement, a capsule of a person’s life. The goal is not merely to present stats — that’s what the death certificate is for — but to somehow capture the essence of the person and communicate this in a prescribed format. It’s a challenge compounded by a short deadline, and when you have the heady responsibility of handling a rush of obligations while in a state of prolonged shock, you do wonder if you’re doing right by the deceased in releasing these words to posterity under pressure.
It helped that we’d both written bios for ourselves, online profiles that I could refer to in case I got stuck. David covered the basics in his profiles very succinctly, but I knew how much thought and revision he’d put into them. I’ve seen the drafts. But there’s always the issue of format: internet page width is dictated by screen resolutions but there’s no restriction in length. Newspaper obituaries have columns and pieces are edited for space. There are different audiences to consider.
I was reading Breigh’s blog, which is pink for the month of October, and clicked through some links on the Breast Cancer Awareness section to arrive at this article by Carol Smith at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
January 14, 2004: To be dead sure you get the last word, write your own obit (if the link expires, I’ve saved a PDF)
It’s an interesting read and parts are amusing, in case you’re wondering if to click or not to click. It’s an exercise I’d like to try, for reasons discussed in the piece, mostly self-analysis. How do I want people to remember me?
I tried to inject humour into my memorial speech for David, someone who never failed to make me and everyone else around him laugh. In the unrehearsed memorial talk I opened with, I clung to a piece of paper for inspiration, as if my life depended on it — a limerick that he’d written for me and presented to me at JFK Airport upon our first meeting — while I fumbled for words. I also told a joke, which thankfully went over better than I thought it would and gave me the boost I needed to continue. Some of his cadets told funny stories, too, and it broke my heart to see them cry. That’s the thing about laughing and crying — they often go hand in hand, because that’s the way life is… full of seemingly contradictory emotions.
I miss David’s humour dearly, and daily. One of grief’s first casualties to my personality and a longstanding one is a serious hit to my sense of humour, since it was fuelled by his. It was one of the many ways David wooed me, after all. I remember one night in Philadelphia by the waterfront last year when David said something in a Boston accent and we laughed so hard we literally fell over, gasping for air, clutching each other and unable to breathe. I’d give anything for one of those moments again.
If David had written my obituary, I’m certain he’d be his reliably eloquent self, but I’d hope he would also be his amusing self, too. But since I have no chance to find out, I’ll see if I can resurrect some of the wit that drew him in, too, and live up to that part of his legacy.
— from Allan & Cheryl
Earlier today, when I arrived at work:
And, while I’m still in the Halloween theme:
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