Strange Little Eulogy Confession for a Cool Saturday Eve

If I know you well, and have known you for a long time, it is entirely likely that at some point I have sketched out a eulogy to read at your funeral. I recognize that at the very least this is morbid, but what can I do? I have been doing this since I was a child.

My grandfather died when I was thirteen, and I wrote a poem that the minister who conducted the funeral service read aloud as part of the service, as I was too overwrought and self-conscious to do so myself. But there had been no question, in my mind and I suspect in the minds of other family members, that I would write something. And although my grandfather's death was sudden and unexpected, I remember all too well that when I sat down to put my thoughts on paper, I already knew what I wanted to say.

Sometimes I find myself doing this almost absent-mindedly. I will be sitting having lunch with my parents, sister, grandmother and daughters and will realize that I am structuring the talk in my head: a funny anecdote with which to begin, an inroad to the essence of the personality, a way to make people weep with joyful recognition, the words that will make me feel I have done the deceased the justice he or she deserves. I have done it with every member of my family, most of my friends, and all of my pets.

Sometimes when I realize I am doing this I make myself stop, with a shiver, a chill. For it is ominous, disconcerting, an overt recognition, acknowledgment, of death. And more, it seems like hubris: like I am assuming somehow that the subject of my eulogy will die before I will, or worse, like my thoughts themselves are a harbinger of death. And hubris, too, in that I am assuming those who know me well--some of whom are not related to me, and may have very specific ideas about how they would like their funerals to be run that feature me seated quietly in a back pew--have me in mind as keynote speaker of their own demise. I would like to say, as regards this confession, that I really do believe this quirk of my thought process has more to do with my own desire to make sense of people's place in the world than it does with any desire to take over your services upon passing, whatever form they may assume.

The great unspoken here, in my history of composing these secret eulogies and confessing it here, is my fear, and perhaps subconscious preoccupation with my own place in the world, how I will be remembered, and captured in words and memory, upon the occasion of my own death. I feel uncomfortable even writing that here, but it must be said: If you are someone who fears death, and I most certainly am, then your mind worries over the concept in some way over the course of a lifetime. Mine seems to have settled on this odd fashion.

I am almost tempted to share some of my eulogy thoughts with you here, but I won't. I think the saving grace of this weird habit of the mind is that the thoughts themselves are loving, and cherished, and private, for now, as those I love live and thrive and simply are, and I am, and when the time comes, if it seems right, rest easy that I will have spent some thought thinking about what to say on your behalf. I do not take your presence here, or mine, for granted.