Knox — Departing thoughts in your own immortal words

Jack Knox used to write stories for The Kamloops News. Now he writes columns for the Victoria Times- Colonist.

COLUMN — “What would your obituary say if you died today?” The question was posed on Twitter this week by CHEK-TV’s Erin Glazier, who was reporting on the reaction to that candid, funny-but-painful death notice that ran in the Times Colonist last Sunday.

If you haven’t read the obit yet, just Google the name “George Ferguson.” The Internet went gaga for what appeared to the perfect account of an imperfect life. Ferguson’s daughter wrote it, eschewing mustn’t-speak-ill-of-the-dead convention in favour of a fuller, franker depiction of the man.

So, who do you want to write your obit? Increasingly, people have been seizing the wheel themselves, writing their own exits lines while still alive.

Seattle journalist Jane Lotter, who died a year ago this week, began hers by explaining that one of the few advantages of terminal cancer is that you have the time to write your own obit. “The other advantages are no longer bothering with sunscreen and no longer worrying about your cholesterol.” It got poignant after that.

In 2009, Hornby Island poet Billy Little left us with this: “After decades of passion, dedication to world peace and justice, powerful friendships, recognition, being loved undeservedly by extraordinary women, a close and powerful relationship with a strong, handsome, capable, thoughtful son Matt, a never-ending stream of amusing ideas, affections shared with a wide range of creative men and women, a long residence in the paradisical landscape of Hornby Island, success after success in the book trade, fabulous meals, unmeasurable inebriation, dancing beyond exhaustion, satori after satori, Billy Little regrets he’s unable to schmooze today. In lieu of flowers please send a humongous donation to the War Resisters League.”

He was also clear about what he wanted etched on his tombstone:

Billy Little

Poet

Hydro is too expensive

Some use the opportunity to own up to misdeeds.

In 2012, Salt Lake City’s Val Patterson used his obit to reveal a number of secrets, from kicking rocks into Old Faithful, to getting banned from Disneyland, to stealing a safe from a motel in 1971, to building a career on a PhD awarded through a University of Utah clerical error: “For all of the electronic engineers I have worked with, I’m sorry, but you have to admit my designs always worked very well.”

(Best not to confess too soon, though: In 2005, a British man who thought he was about to croak admitted to his wife that he had slept with her best friend. Alas, he rallied unexpectedly, surviving until 2010 when he was stabbed to death by his wife as they quarrelled about his affair.)

Leave your obituary up to others, and you don’t know what you’ll get. (Cartoonist Adrian Raeside once placed an obituary in the Times Colonist in which he asked mourners to send single-malt scotch and Cuban cigars in lieu of flowers.)

Too often the result is either a bloodless chronology that says more about what you did than who you were, or a vague cliché: “He had a big heart, but undersized lungs.”

Of course, the best way to control what is said is to create your own legacy. They say it was a premature obituary that rattled Alfred Nobel into changing the way he would be remembered. In 1888, a French newspaper mistakenly reported the death of the inventor of dynamite with a story that read “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Nobel’s response was to leave most of his money to what would become the Nobel Prizes.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t get this kind of Ghost of Christmas Future kick-start.

Instead, we live lives of deferred greatness, waiting to put our stamp on the world until after the mortgage is paid, or the kids are out of school, or the second coat of paint is on the deck. I totally plan to become awesome, as soon as I get caught up on Breaking Bad. Until then, the eulogy might be a little thin.

Which brings us back to Erin’s question: “What would your obituary say if you died today?”

I thought for a minute, then typed: “Jack is dead. Funeral Friday. Golf clubs for sale, $200 OBO.”

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