I Did It My Way

~ Linda Wright
I’ve been working to update my “When File.” It’s a list of things to do when I die, like what places my beneficiary should notify in order to collect whatever life insurance or retirement funds remain. It also has information about who might want to receive a call, email or letter explaining that I have died. There are instructions on how to remove my email from the many listservs I belong to and passwords to close out my blogs, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. I don’t want to be one of those back-from-the-dead faces that pop up on a computer screen saying, “You and Elsie have five mutual friends, don’t you want to be Elsie’s friend too?” I happen to know that Elsie died four months ago. That means it is now too late to be her Facebook friend.
 
What my When File does not contain is instructions for any funeral or memorial service in my memory. Let the living plan whatever comforts them, I’m the one person who will not be there. I also haven’t made arrangements for disposal of my bodily remains. “Do whatever is the least expensive and least time-consuming,” I tell my spouse.
 
I know I will leave behind clothing, photographs and unfinished writing projects, but these I believe can be easily given away or tossed in the trash.
 
Of course one thing I do not know is when the When File will be used.
 
“She probably won’t live to be ten years old,” one doctor told my mother when I was eight. I wasn’t aware of the prognosis at the time, but I was aware that my parents treated time as precious. Relationships with people and with the earth were of the utmost value; acquiring objects were the lowest. They didn’t stop planning for the future, but the present took priority.
 
When one of my friends learned that she had liver cancer and would probably not live for more than a year she went on a search to complete her glass frog collection. Her friends all over the world began to look for the red frog she desired, focusing their love and concern for her on the task.
 
Another friend made her “bucket list” shortly after her fiftieth birthday, writing down all the countries she wanted to visit and all the adventures she wanted to try. The first items on her list included divorcing her husband, giving her daughter a dream wedding and purchasing a little house by the ocean. For years I received postcards from her and notes about completed items from the list. One note said, “I got my ride on a tug boat this summer.” Lately her email messages say more about the friends she has made in her new community, her grandchildren and how she has started dating again.
 
One of my cousins wrote instructions to her husband on how to cook meals, do laundry and take care of things on their own. In the last week of her life she stuck the notes on doorways, walls, the refrigerator and the washing machine.
 
When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
—Greg Anderson

 

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Published by Linda Wright

Linda Wright, author of "My Turn: When Caregiving Roles Reverse," now lives in Florida. She has served on the boards of organizations serving people with rare, genetic bleeding disorders like hers. As a writer, she has contributed to several anthologies and is a member of the Tallahassee Writers Association. Linda is married to the Reverend Ms. Robin Gray.

2 thoughts on “I Did It My Way”

  2. What a wonderful piece! I really appreciated your sharing yours and others' stories. Although I mentally constantly go over my "list" of undones, I think I'll write it out and post it for myself. As for writing some things down for those left behind, it's high time I did that. Thanks for the prompt.

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