It has always been a habit of mine to peruse the obituaries. Not out of morbid fascination, but out of a curiosity of the snapshot into one’s life. The young and the old combined on several black and white pages. The young person taken too early or the older, stately grandmother who spent her life dedicated to others.
What strikes me is that their entire life is captured in a small paragraph. It gives me pause as I read them. I wonder what took them away from their families and friends.
As I read these each morning, I have to ask myself, is that all there is? Is this how our mortality is summed up? An exercise I gave myself was to write my own obituary. I found it quite difficult in some respects. We are conditioned to never speak highly of ourselves because that makes us appear haughty, so it can be a challenge to talk yourself up while writing the last words that people will read about you.
As I finished my obituary, I found it to be therapeutic. There was a sense of accomplishment with all the things that I have done and a sense of excitement of all the things yet to come. My final story isn’t complete, but for those whose story is, I thank you for showing me the way.
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