Wednesday, January 18, 2017

                Obituaries are curious things. (I betcha that I have your attention now, don’t I?)

 “The first thing I do each morning is to read the obituaries in the newspaper,” an old person often jokes. “If I don’t see my name, I go make breakfast.”

I am not sure if it means anything but the Globe and Mail attaches its large, Saturday edition of obituaries at the back of the Sports section. Hmm!  I always skim through them every Saturday, not because I know any of the people or even expect to, but because these are not the usual obituaries – name, day of death, names of loved ones and relatives, date, time and place for a service of some kind (if any).

Many of these obituaries are lengthy narratives about the dearly departed one’s life. There may be a picture of the person, sometimes a much younger version of the person. There are extensive biographies – educational background, employment, interests, hobbies, etc. Nothing is left out – sometimes the smallest detail is thrown in. One man is described as the “intellectual heart of the family.”  Another person is described as “always outward looking and curious and believed in seeing equality in all mankind.” A woman is praised because “her dining table became a home-away-from- home.” Or there was the woman who was described as someone who “touched the hearts of everyone she met through her kind and giving spirit, unconditional love, her strong faith and her passion for life.”

The one obit which especially caught my eye and inspired this blog was for the woman who was an artist. It made me smile to read that she “loved her privacy and would not have wanted you reading this.”  But it was the sentence on how to honour her memory which made me think: “please take something that you sort-of-like from your house and leave it on the curb for someone else to enjoy.”

At first, it seemed an odd suggestion. I presume the woman may have been an advocate for recycling or perhaps she saw beauty in what others deemed to be ugly or unwanted. One person’s trash is always somebody’s art, sort of thing.

But it also spoke to me as an analogy. All the people whose obituaries graced the Saturday pages left something on the curb for others to enjoy and recycle in memory and imitation of the ones who have been lost in this life. It wasn’t usually big and splashy.  One man is remembered for tobogganing with his grandchildren. Another person is remembered for her “apricot jam and muffins.”  Good times at a family cottage appear regularly throughout.  Another will always be remembered for his “honesty, gentleness, sincerity, and sense of humour.” One will be remembered as a “beer aficionado, cheese connoisseur, bird lover and a lifelong learner.” You get the idea.

These folks gave away pieces of themselves all their lives. They were not perfect or saintly. Few ever became famous. But most of them contributed back to life, maybe more than they took or demanded. What they have left on the curb is not garbage or junk. These are characteristics that are reusable, recyclable, and very environmentally green.

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,

                mortals that you care for them.

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

                and crowned them with glory and honour.” (Psalm 8:4 – 5)

When I was taking my clinical training back in the day one of the exercises we were given was to write our own obituaries. It was meant, in part, to help us face our own mortality, as well as to respect and honour the lives of patients, some of whom were dying.

How will you or I be written up?

Dale