Living Eulogies
from Medium
Living Eulogies
by Richard Selzer | June 17, 2022
I recently got a notice that a high school classmate had died. I’m 76. We’re getting old. Such announcements are likely to become frequent, until there are few of us left.
I hadn’t heard anything about him in 58 years. Now from eulogistic messages and obits, I get hints of a rich lifetime. He is someone I would have probably enjoyed knowing well.
I’m reminded of Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar. Antony ironically claims that the evil men do lives after them and the good oft lies buried with their bones.
Eulogies are the reverse of that. They summarize a life, emphasizing the best. But they are only written and delivered when someone dies. That’s a shame, and it’s unnecessary.
I’d like to start a new tradition of living eulogies.
One possibility would be to hold a celebratory gathering (in person and remote) once every 20 years. Friends and family gather and share their remembrances, saying what they would have said had this been a funeral rather than a birthday.
If you were the target of such an event, you should pause and reflect. Is this the way you want to be remembered? What should you do to improve the narrative at the next such gathering? This would be an occasion where you could reconnect with people you had taken for granted or lost track of. It would also be a time to bond with the self you have been, being reminded of how your acts, your words, your presence has affected others.
Start at age 20, and continuing once every ten years, up to and, hopefully, beyond 100.
I’m reminded of a poem I wrote 52 years ago.
Finnegan Died
On the occasion of the closing of Thee Coffee House, San Angelo, Texas, and the assemblage of its nostalgic friends, many of whom hadn’t been around for months. November 28, 1970.
as people do every once in a while,
so they held a funeral, an Irish funeral,
and relatives and old friends who hadn’t seen him for months or years all gathered,
and it being winter, they held the picnic inside by candlelight;
and everybody had such a good time
that Grandpa promised to die next year so they could have another good time just like it,
and Grandma volunteered for the next year,
then all the aunts and uncles and cousins and third cousins and friends,
till they had two centuries all booked up,
and some pessimist in the crowd complained that he probably wouldn’t live long enough for them to celebrate his funeral,
and one of the aunts complained that hers was scheduled after one of the cousins, and she wasn’t going to play second fiddle to any mere cousin;
so Finnegan got up out of his coffin and told them to stop their squabbling —
they’d just open up a coffeehouse,
and every week they’d close it again,
and if people died, well, they could do it when they felt like it, in no particular order;
but everybody could get together anyway, once or twice a week,
and celebrate the funeral of the coffeehouse.
Richard,
This is a nice idea. I also like the idea of writing my own obituary, knowing that my family would edit it for pomposity, mendacity and brevity.
Cordially, JP
Richard,
Sounds like a good idea, that is, the writing of one’s obituary pre-mortem. My thoughts on the subject are over 60 years in development, and I know how it all started. I recall reading the local obituaries as a youngster to see if I knew the person who had died, but the obits were often just those of Hollywood celebs. I recall the sadness of my mother’s obituary when I was 13. It brought tears to my eyes, and it was a sad time for all in the family.
Alternatively, Before Yale, I read John Updike’s “Rabbit Run” that began with a wake for the hero’s father-in-law. That wake was a celebration of two realities; those attending the wake were still alive, and the deceased was remembered as a wonderful and loving person. For years there was a battle in my mind on the extremes that a death could bring, grief or joy, but not both, not ever.
I recently read “Where They Are Buried”, with a short biography on celebrity lives and burial, or their cremation. Obviously buried 6 feet under ground is far from everyone’s final resting site. As a physician, I am acutely aware how tenuous our grasp is on our lives. John Lennon is credited with the wisdom, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. I wish more people understood that reality.
I’ll work on my personal obituary for a final reason; the truth. Just the facts is really all that matters anyway. Embellishing one’s obituary, for whatever reason, is irrelevant, I think, and probably selfish as well. Just leave out the warts.
M H (Tony) Anderson MD
.
As for writing our own obituaries, isn’t that pretty much what we did for that door-stopper entitled “Our Stories: Fifty Years Later: Yale College Class of 1969: 50th Reunion Book”?
David Lupher
Exactly what I was thinking. It is a good idea and we did do it, but it would be good to encourage expansion of the idea.
This must be a good idea given that there are more replies than the standard posting. I think it reflects that by our current age, many of us are wondering what “they” will say about us once we are gone.
It seems to me that one of the things that will be missing if we participate in the writing of our own obituaries will be the elimination one important thing: an obituary written with our ability to “provide the truth”, or “make corrections” defeats the purpose — or does it?
In wondering whether or not that is true, I looked up the definition of “obituary” and found “obituaries are a great way to celebrate the life of the deceased by making a short story to keep their memory alive.”
So, our misgivings about obituaries only talking about the good parts of a person’s life may not be appropriate.
I suppose then, what we are wishing for is actually an autobiography. In that form of writing, you can talk about yourself, recording anything you want: the good, the bad, and the misunderstood.
Unfortunately, an autobiography sounds like a lot of work. Perhaps as a way of making this sound easier would be to refer to this as an “autobiographical essay.” And so, we land very close to what David Lupher suggested: Essays from our 50th Reunion maybe a place to start, perhaps expanding them to include topics we choose to leave out due to our residual competitiveness left over from our Bright College Years.