After my heart almost gave out, I decided to pull together and complete as much preparation for my death as is feasible. I am doing this to make sure that Patti is not left with such details to figure out in her grief, and so as to leave less of a mess behind for others to clean up, my mother’s maxim. In keeping with that maxim, I’m compiling a book I’ve entitled “Mike’s Dead, Now What” that I’m filling with household information – this is the plumber we use, this is how the storm windows fit into their slots, the garbage goes out Monday night, these are the contact numbers for my TSA account …. You get the idea.
I’m also making decisions about the end of the end: a choice of funeral home, the disposal of my body, who I’d like to deliver eulogies and finally the writing of an obituary.
I want the last say. I am, after all, the dead one.
Writing an obituary seems like a pretty straightforward job – I’m to make listings of the dates of my birth and death (well, a blank for that), of those I’m leaving behind, where I lived, what I did, what I valued, and memorial and burial information.
There are two contortionist’s tricks involved in this: writing about oneself in the third person and endeavoring to be detached enough from one’s life to see it clearly and then describe it to others.
The first person to third person swap feels off because I know I’m choosing not to mention all those misdeeds my conscience now uncovers as I describe my bright and shining parts. Those sins still sting. So … I convince myself that an obituary is not a confession, not a public act of contrition nor a request for mercy from the reader. That reasoning seems part of the trick.
The second part of the trick, trying on the skin of a detached observer, absolutely requires humility. No one wants to read a narcissist’s praise for himself. Therefore, it is always better to stick with facts: I lived here, loved them, did this, loved that. Again, those left behind will make their judgments about whether I was a decent human being … or not.
Andrew Wyeth’s Dr. Syn
This is the last piece of my writing anyone will read. That occurred to me first. I would like to be noble and diffident, but I confess that I am, too often, a putz, this, perhaps being one more occasion of my putz-ness. I want to make sure I’ve written something tight and clear and something that captures who I think I have been, even knowing that my rendition of me is bound to look skewed, incomplete, wildly off the mark, delusional, or just plain ridiculous … depending upon whomever is reading it with morning coffee and snorting as they make their way through each paragraph.
I will envy those people their coffees and their morning light.
My first wife’s last words were “I’ll have a cup” when visitors to her bedside spoke of brewing some coffee. Maybe I’ll show up and poke a voice through the veil and ask for one as well.
After my heart tried to kill me and after lovely people saved me, I know that I cannot go back to the dreamy lie of believing my death is way off away in a gauzy future. It is on the other side of the fire’s reach, its eyes red, impatient.
What will I do with the time I have left? How am I to change my life?
