Tell me this: how would you like to remembered?
Do you think you can trust that boring clergyman or a member of your family to portray you properly on your funeral day or in that obituary whether online or in the newspaper?
There is an alternative to that babbling clergyman who hasn’t met you and knows damn all about you – make sure you have written your own obituary so that you are master of your own legacy.
Don’t think the newspapers won’t accept your personalised obituary. These days they’d eat the hand off your solicitor to get that fee.
This trend of penning one’s own obituary is increasingly voguish in the United States. The unusual for many of us in Northern Ireland is the norm elsewhere.
Californians have penthouse suites complete with video facilities in Wag Hotel (The Mission district – San Francisco) to enable pet lovers to see their little pooches while on the other side of the world.
My late Dad used to say “there is money in jam jars if would collect them.” He was absolutely right.
Companies are now springing up in many parts of the United States with specifically designed courses to teach people how to write their own obituaries.
I have signed up. I can’t trust you guys!
1 Comment
Dear Sir,
In reply to your recently-expressed desire to have ready a timely and appropriate “nunc dimittis” in the sad event of your unfortunate, untimely, and (I have no doubt) widely-to-be-regretted excursion in the company of Charon, I should be honoured if you would consider me for the position of obituary-writer, which yr humble servant is uniquely qualified to discharge.
I was, for a goodly number of years, attendant upon a merrie band called “Ye County Council”. Many is the lay I penned for them; to their entire delight and satisfaction, tho’ I say it myself, which they would after give forth to a lowly and ravening class of ruffians known as “Ye Press-Gang”, whereby, thereby, satiating them.
As a sample of my abilities, I humbly proffer hereunder some verses which I have put together, the suitability wherof you may yourself judge. I warrant you will not be disappointed. You may, in the first verse, inset whichever name takes your fancy (provided, to be sure, it does not disdurb the elegance of the poetic metre). I trust you will find it fulsome whilst not being excessively obsequious:
Horseman! Draw rein, and shed a tear
for ****** ******, resting here
A wordsmith, he, a man of letters,
who counted few among his betters
With charm and style, with wit and grace,
shed light upon his native place
Its sodden lanes and dreary steeples,
its fractious tribes and stiff-necked peoples
With modesty he strode life’s stage
(he had no Wikipedia page)
His reputation he’d disdain
to leave to others to explain
So, ‘fore life ebbed,
in verses free,
He penned his own
obituary.
Yr Humble Servant
By The Sign Of The Lych-Gate,
Tuskar Rock