86. It all started in my bedroom as a kid. I would turn out the lights and read the obituaries in Long Island’s Newsday on the floor of my room by the flicker of my strawberry-scented votive candles.
You might think this sounds morbid, but reading obituaries makes you think about what people will remember about you. You wonder: Who were these people? What was their story? What are people going to say about ME when I’m gone? Oh, wow. Maybe that’s something I could actually work on NOW?
How do you want people to remember you?
I might want a billboard.* But I don’t want a government holiday or a tombstone—or even an urn. Just ashes that the people who loved me can spread somewhere in nature to remember how I lived.**
I’ve taken a lot of marching orders on living from the dead, by reading obituaries and biographies. To the point that when someone reads my obituary one day, they—hopefully!—will think, That’s a pretty good way to live. It’s possible they will learn how not to live. But—knock on wood—I still have a few more years to read more obituaries and biographies and get ideas for how to live a more meaningful life.
* Or a footnote.
** Just don’t spread them in water—no oceans or lakes or rivers or built-in pools. And not near the mall. Ideally an earthy patch in Northern California, preferably in the mountains but not too high.