Living Eulogies
I recently got a notice that a high school classmate had died. I’m 76. We’re getting old. Such announcements are likely to become frequent, until there are few of us left.
I hadn’t heard anything about him in 58 years. Now from eulogistic messages and obits, I get hints of a rich lifetime. He is someone I would have probably enjoyed knowing well.
I’m reminded of Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar. Antony ironically claims that the evil men do lives after them and the good oft lies buried with their bones.
Eulogies are the reverse of that. They summarize a life, emphasizing the best. But they are only written and delivered when someone dies. That’s a shame, and it’s unnecessary.
I’d like to start a new tradition of living eulogies.
One possibility would be to hold a celebratory gathering (in person and remote) once every 20 years. Friends and family gather and share their remembrances, saying what they would have said had this been a funeral rather than a birthday.
If you were the target of such an event, you should pause and reflect. Is this the way you want to be remembered? What should you do to improve the narrative at the next such gathering? This would be an occasion where you could reconnect with people you had taken for granted or lost track of. It would also be a time to bond with the self you have been, being reminded of how your acts, your words, your presence has affected others.
Start at age 20, and continuing once every ten years, up to and, hopefully, beyond 100.
I’m reminded of a poem I wrote 52 years ago.
Finnegan Died
On the occasion of the closing of Thee Coffee House, San Angelo, Texas, and the assemblage of its nostalgic friends, many of whom hadn’t been around for months. November 28, 1970.
Finnegan died,
as people do every once in a while,
so they held a funeral, an Irish funeral,
and relatives and old friends who hadn’t seen him for months or years all gathered,
and it being winter, they held the picnic inside by candlelight;
and everybody had such a good time
that Grandpa promised to die next year so they could have another good time just like it,
and Grandma volunteered for the next year,
then all the aunts and uncles and cousins and third cousins and friends,
till they had two centuries all booked up,
and some pessimist in the crowd complained that he probably wouldn’t live long enough for them to celebrate his funeral,
and one of the aunts complained that hers was scheduled after one of the cousins, and she wasn’t going to play second fiddle to any mere cousin;
so Finnegan got up out of his coffin and told them to stop their squabbling —
they’d just open up a coffeehouse,
and every week they’d close it again,
and if people died, well, they could do it when they felt like it, in no particular order;
but everybody could get together anyway, once or twice a week,
and celebrate the funeral of the coffeehouse.
