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Why I Write My Own Obituary Every Year

为自己写讣告
I wrote my ‎ ‎ week. I often do so once a year; it has ‎ a kind of ‎.
I’ve met a few others who do the same or something ‎. A teacher I know likes to start every new year by writing her obituary or what she hopes it will ‎ like by year’s end. Another friend writes hers on Rosh Hashana. Recently a close friend wrote his life story as part of the ‎ to get on the kidney ‎ waiting ‎, and it ‎ to me that’s exactly what their ‎ resembled: a living obituary.
The first time I wrote my obituary, I was 12 years old. This was not a school assignment or a dramatic ‎.
My mother was ‎ as a ‎ at our ‎ ‎, and she was ‎ to write her own obituary, an imaginative exercise as preparation to ‎ with terminally ill ‎. This assignment was ‎ enough to ‎ some ‎ to quit the ‎, but my mother stuck with it, and the idea sparked with me ‎.
At the dinner ‎, my ‎ and I talked over my mother’s assignment to help her brainstorm. Later that night, I ‎ in bed ‎ out my own. My aunt, a reporter and ‎, gave me my first ‎ a few years earlier, and it felt like a ‎ extension of my ‎ ‎.
I ‎ the format of my mother’s assignment: the facts, ‎ age and home; survivors; ‎ in ‎ or school; and ‎, ‎, or how people might remember me.
My mother ‎ to ‎ in hospice for the next 20 years, and I ‎ to write my obituary on a mostly annual ‎, ‎ after she stopped ‎. As I grew to ‎ that every ‎ my mother met would soon die, some ‎ hours of their meeting and others after months, I also came to ‎ that most people outside our house could not tolerate talking much about ‎, ‎ their own.
The ‎ of this ‎ obituary writing is not as ‎ as it might ‎. If you take a few minutes to try it, you might find the same. In about a page or so, I usually end up with a ‎ ‎ of the year, held ‎ all the past ones. I ‎ many of the accomplishments that felt precious one year were hardly ‎ a mention the next.
Some years are short and ‎; some swell with joy and hope, ‎ ‎. There is a ‎ in the accumulation, like the stacking of ‎ — daughter, wife, mother of one, mother of two. And owning up to the unstacking, too, such as divorces, difficult moves, disruptions and the ‎ of others in your life.
In years that feel ‎, sometimes I’ll write an ‎ obituary. Imagining I’ve lived to 94, I’ll ‎ a Ph.D. behind my name, maybe a lottery win, a huge ‎ to my ‎ library. Though ‎ the most ‎ ‎ — I got my ‎’s license! I went on an ‎ dig! I owned a country house on the ‎ of ‎! — tick off ‎ accomplishments and accumulations quickly before ‎ down into the ‎ of it: who and what are left behind.
Certain years have passed without my being able to come to the page for this exercise in any form: the year after September 2001 (I was in the World Trade Center the day of the attacks), more ‎ the hardest years of my marriage and divorce. I could not write my obituary at all in the thick of the pandemic; as a ‎ ‎ to two kids, the ‎ of ‎ that ‎ me in the spring of 2020 clouded my ‎ to ‎ myself enough for what no ‎ felt like an exercise.
When I ‎ returned to the ‎, the space of 24 months felt ‎ and ‎. I had the ‎ of writing ‎ a black hole. Work and ‎ had been ‎ by the ‎ of ‎ ‎ or dough ‎, the ‎ ‎ of my son’s hair or the changing color of my own, different ways of keeping time.
Most years, though, writing my obituary brings a kind of ‎. While obituaries are traditionally public ‎, meant to ‎ ‎ ‎, ‎ them into my ‎ gave me a ‎ to ‎ a more intimate ‎. This private ‎ wasn’t ‎ on newsworthiness or fact. When I flip ‎ my old obituaries, I am flipping ‎ past ‎ of myself. In many ways, they are as good as ‎, unreachable ‎ selves, and I find ‎ in being able to say hello.
This year writing my obituary felt more ‎ than ‎. I ‎ perhaps my younger son’s ‎ his ‎ ‎ teeth had me ‎ ‎ or maybe the ‎ anxiety swirl of the election ‎ was clouding the ‎. But in writing that first line — always my name and age of ‎ — I ‎: I was about to be 48, the same age as my aunt, the one who gave me my first ‎, when she died. And at 14, my oldest son was my ‎ age when I ‎ her. That she meant so much to me in such a short time gives me a hope I didn’t know I needed.
In the documentary “Obit,” about the obituary ‎ of The New York Times, the reporter Margalit Fox says, “Obituaries have next to nothing to do with ‎ and ‎ everything to do with life.” It ‎ ‎ ‎ that we wait until after our ‎ to write them and never get to read them ourselves. Writing your obituary while you’re still ‎ can offer ‎ about your life and, mercifully, if you find something ‎, you still have time to ‎.
I’m ‎ my mother brought the ‎ of ‎ at ‎ this way to the dinner ‎ all those decades ago and ‎ to do so ‎ all the stories of her dying ‎ after that. Just as my aunt taught me the ‎ of keeping a ‎, my mother’s ‎ exercise taught me the ‎ and ‎ of holding ‎ close, so I could remember to live.
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Why I Write My Own Obituary Every Year | Leximory