OBITUARY EXERCISE BRINGS OUT THE BLARNEY

A good friend of mine, a Catholic priest, told me of a spiritual exercise he did while on vacation recently. He wrote his own obituary. When he told me this, my first reaction was, “Eww, that’s morbid.”

But then he explained the exercise does a number of useful things. For one, it causes a person to contemplate mortality.

“Morality?” I said. “No, MORTALITY,” he replied, “And if you interrupt me one more time you’re gonna need an obituary—today!”

I guess that exercise is not a bad idea. (I mean, the exercise of writing your own obit, not the exercise of interrupting a priest with smart-aleck comments.) To write your own obituary, you have to ask yourself some honest questions, such as, “What have I accomplished in my life?” “Who were the people closest to me?” “What will folks remember about me?”

It is an exercise that forces us to take a panoramic, “big picture” view of life, rather than the short-term, frantic, minute-by-minute focus we have so often these days, where our view of the world is about as limited as that of a guy stuck at the bottom of a well.

So I decided to try it, and came up with this obit notice: “Bill Dunn made many people happy—when he died last Tuesday. Especially pleased were those people who are both devoted to the National Anthem and completely devoid of a sense of humor.”

(Well, maybe I shouldn’t have written it right after all those letter-to-the-editor love notes appeared in the paper.)

Besides being a spiritual exercise that helps you put your life in perspective, writing your own obituary has a few other benefits. For example, the task of writing your obit won’t be done hastily at the last minute. I’m sure the following stressful conversation occurs often:

“Oh no, the funeral director needs the final version of the obituary notice. Let’s have Aunt Margaret write it. She’s smart and she owns a computer.”

“No, she hated Uncle Billy. She’ll write nasty stuff.”

“OK, then let’s have Cousin Danny write it.”

“No, that’s even worse! He wants to be a humor columnist. He’ll fill the obituary with booger jokes.”

“Yeah, but that stuff made Uncle Billy laugh.”

“Fine then, let Danny write it.”

Another benefit of writing your own obituary is the fact you don’t need facts. In other words, you can write it the same way you write a resume, or the way politicians write campaign commercials. Since I have a lot more worldly wisdom now than I did in my 20s, when I write my final version I won’t include phrases such as, “Discovered a cure for cancer.” (Funny how those HR people reviewing resumes actually wanted PROOF!)

I’ll instead emphasize all the other humanitarian efforts that were the hallmark of my life (using, of course, the definition of the word hallmark that means: “He purchased greeting cards once in a while”).

Keeping my saintly endeavors to a modest minimum, so the obit doesn’t require two full pages in the newspaper, will be my greatest challenge. (“Bill loved great challenges.”)

When I told my priest friend what I planned to do, he reminded me lying is a sin. “Lying?” I exclaimed. “But you’re a fellow Irishman. You know it’s not really lying. It’s just a little blarney. It’s story-telling. It’s what we do!”

Well, he wasn’t buying it. So after all the embellishment and blarney, my obituary will conclude with the following sentences: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. But ‘twas a pretty good story, now, wasn’t it?”