It's 9AM
He died last night.
Every obit starts the same way.
It is the last chapter of every book of life.
The end.
It might be a beginning depending on what you believe.
Or a great big nothing.
Or a return as a dog or a butterfly.
Its all conjecture once the cover is closed.
Which gives you one option.
Get busy.
Living.
I was thinking about what I wanted my last chapter to say.
And if I had enough time to get the headlines done.
A whole part of goal setting for 2024 and beyond.
Big stuff, for sure.
Maybe some small stuff too.
Things like, good father, good citizen, good man.
Good friend, good neighbor.
But I don’t build good fences, so the last one may be suspect.
Or I need more practice.
Is that the legacy we need?
More people remember that Jimmy Carter didn’t have a great term in office than they do his act of building one home per year from 1980 on for Habitat for Humanity.
Now, he’s known for longest lived ex.
Which may be the first line of his last chapter.
Which brings me to the question that kept me up a little late.
What do you want your obit to say?
When you line up the things I’ve done, it seems like a grand experiment toward something.
But I remember it mostly as punch drunk decisions, a litany of reactions to actions that did not always feel equal or opposite.
Decide to run a 100 mile race.
Suffer.
A lot.
Decide to kayak the length of the Mississippi River.
Almost drown.
Decide to become a small business publishing books.
Almost go under.
More than once.
Decide to build/rehab houses and make a media business around it.
Almost go under.
More than once.
Staying where I shouldn’t.
Going where I couldn’t.
Doing things that most people have called stupid.
Or impossible.
And making so many mistakes.
So many bad decisions and bad choices and errors.
That when they are written of for obits and pundits, it will feel like a man cursed.
Maybe.
Or it will show one thing.
The only thing that really matters.
As demonstrated in the final chapter of this particular book of life to be written fifty years from today.
Grit.
What adjectives do you want said over your grave?
What reminders of you do you want to leave behind?
Because unless we make some advances in implants, nano-tech and/or vampire outbreaks, we all have the exact same last sentence in our books.
The End.
Start today on what you want them to write about you.
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