I’ve been thinking, of late, about who will show up to my funeral. Maybe it’s because I recently got married, and went through the difficult process of deciding who to invite.
I’ve caught myself thinking, in the back of mind: who are the people who will take the plane to my funeral? As if this were some kind of measure of my life and quality of my relationships.
Yet ultimately, perseverating on such a list – be it for a funeral or wedding – is arbitrary and an example of black-and-white thinking. Just because someone was at my wedding doesn’t mean our relationship is super-meaningful. Just because someone wasn’t at my wedding doesn’t make the relationship worthless. Grey areas abound. Relationships are dynamic things that evolve over many years.
Yesterday, I got a call with sad news that a friend had died. I donated to the fund for her funeral, but I likely won’t likely be booking a flight. I don’t believe that her soul is at peace or not at peace or in purgatory. I believe that she lives in the ripples she left in the world.
I lit a candle for her yesterday, and talked to people about her. She now also lives, a little bit, in these people who have heard about her and have never met her. She lives in the air of my room, which is different now that the ritual candle has been burned for her. She lives in the $25 dollars I donated to a cat rescue fund in her honor. If that organization gets to pair one more cat with owner, thanks in part to that $25, then she’ll live on there, too.
The writer Mark Manson told the story of a transformative moment of his life. When he was a teenager, he spoke to a friend of his at a party. And then that friend, a few minutes later, jumped off a cliff to his death. His friend had miscalculated the depth of the water, and got shattered on rocks. One moment, the friend was having a good time at the party, the next, he was dead. This was the moment that “we’re all gonna die” really registered for Manson, emotionally.
I’m in a similar moment right now. But there’s more to it than that.
I shared my grief with a friend, who told me that his dog of 15 years had died suddenly. The kids in his household, who are young and hadn’t spent much time with the dog, didn’t seem to care.
In a brief span of time, my friend saw the jarring juxtaposition of two things:
- The suddenness of death
- The world moving on
The first thing — “Memento mori” — seems to be becoming mainstream, which I think is healthy. Yet the second point isn’t talked about as much: that world moves on. Sometimes quickly, that very day, as with the kids and the dog. Sometimes it takes a while. But the world does move on.
When I die, a very tiny fraction of this world’s billions will be emotionally affected, and some of those will show up to my funeral. Some will grieve in other ways, perhaps by lighting a candle and swimming in the ocean and looking at the setting sun, as I did yesterday.
Some might write, as I’m doing now.
All will hopefully return to their lives, as they should. As I want them to.
The moments I shared with my friend now seem extra gone, now that the book of her life is shut, and there’s no opportunity for me to pick up the phone and write another page. Yet they are also not gone. They live on in me.
My friend who lost his dog said: “If this is true – that I’m going to die and the world will keep going – then there’s absolutely no reason to live inauthentically, to preserve the version of myself that’s acting out of fear, to burden my future self with regret.”
He told me that his boss wasn’t very empathetic when he called in and said he needed time to grieve. He told his boss, “Look, I’m here to help, but I’m not going to work just because you and I have different ideas about what grief is supposed to look like.”
This small act of standing up to his boss is what it looks like to pursue our values, to live in authenticity.
Whether 400 people come to my funeral or just four, whether I die at 40 or 100, the basic facts are still the same:
My physical body will die. The world will move on.
The ripples I made during the days of my life will remain. They will combine with a myriad of other ripples, and become part of the world of the future.
danscreativeoulet 