What will your obituary say about you?

When I was studying journalism at Adams State College, my instructor Richard Joyce challenged us in one of our classes to write our own obituary.

He was dead serious about it. For a bunch of kids barely in our 20s, if even that old, it was hard to take the assignment that serious. Our whole lives were ahead of us. Few of us had actually accomplished anything of significance by that point and even fewer were certain where we wanted to go in life.

I don’t remember what I wrote but have often wished I kept the paper. The purpose of the assignment was to make us think not only of the future and what we wanted to accomplish in life, but also about the kind of person we wanted to be. I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time, yet I had to imagine having a wife and kids. I didn’t have a job, but I had to imagine my career.

Since we were learning how to write obituaries, we decided to have some fun with it. In our small class there were plenty of Pulitzer Prize winners, multi-millionaires, famous celebrities, great athletes, and so on. A couple of my buddies and I did some brainstorming over some adult beverages, but then came the sobering realization that in addition to predicting our future, we also had to predict the day we would die and what our cause of death would be.

I do remember predicting that I will die on Oct. 31, 2065. I was going to live to be 100 and I was going to die on Halloween because I had been through a stretch of bad things happening to me on Halloween. I felt superstitious about it. I don’t know why I believed I would live to 100, it just seemed like a reasonable old age. I don’t recall what killed me.

I recently wrote my obituary again, this time for real. No, I’m not dying or planning to die. It’s just that obituaries have been on my mind a lot lately. After moving to Bryan/College Station last summer, one of my side jobs has been writing obituaries for Texas Aggie magazine published by The Association of Former Students at Texas A&M.

Truth be told, writing is kind of a misnomer. I glean key details from obituaries and but them in an eight-line summary that appears in the magazine. I read a lot of obits and learn some fascinating things about people I’ll never know. I also see a lot of signs where family members have struggled to fill in the dash between the birth date and death date. Having been the designated obit writer for my family – coupled with years of obit writing experience in newspapers – I know very well how hard it is to adequately summarize someone’s life when you’re grieving and preparing for a funeral.

I don’t want my family to have to struggle with my life story when my time comes to pass. It will be in a document on my computer desktop. All they will need to do is provided the day of death and add the funeral information. The rest of the details are in place. I plan to make regular revisions to it as needed because there is still a lot of life left to live and hopefully grandchildren and great-grandchildren to add to the survivor’s list.

Another reason I want an accurate obituary is because of the struggles I’ve had researching my family tree. There is so much conflicting information that I may never truly know for sure which ancestors are mine and what information about them I can trust. I want the generations that follow me to have a clear, concise record they can depend on.

The idea for writing my own obituary sprouted from a seed planted at a funeral I covered about 20 years ago. I don’t remember his name, but he was a firefighter with a sharp wit and a hilariously twisted sense of humor. He had a terminal disease and knew his time was short, so he wrote his own eulogy. He chose who would speak, and each speaker played off his cues. It was hilarious! Everyone left feeling uplifted and entertained – just the way he wanted it.

As I work my way through batches of obits each month for the magazine, I have become impressed at the quality individuals the university produces. There are a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners, veterinarians, doctors, captains of industry, and so on. Many of them are Christians and dedicated to their family. Sure, there are a few losers, but they are few and far between. Most Aggies live to be north of 75 years of age and the oldest so far was 102. The youngest was a college freshman who died in an accident.

In doing the obituaries, you get a deep appreciation for how short and fragile life is. Every day is a gift and you never know which one is your last. That’s why you should make today the best that it can be. Taking risks is better than living with regret. Ultimately, dedicating yourself to God and your family is the most important thing you can do. They are the only ones who are going to care once you’ve breathed your last.

Oh, and by the way, one of the benefits we learned in writing our own obituaries in school is that it’s the only way you’re guaranteed to get in the last word.