How Do You Want to Be Remembered? Empowering Yourself Through Writing Your Obituary
Obituaries have a bad rap: morbid little articles that sum up your life when you die. But what if we used obituaries as a tool to shift how we choose to live?
Hi friends! This is a short piece I wrote in response to attending my local death cafe. (For those unaware, death cafes are lowkey, chill gatherings of folks who chat about any and all things death and dying. Usually over tea, cake, or any other assorted goodies)
This piece fits in with my current musings and work with writing obituaries, as well as some of the larger life-story memoir projects I have begun working on with my clients. I hope this is proves to be thought-provoking, and that it’s short enough to be easy to read! (I’m SO BEHIND on reading Substack posts from all the amazing publications I follow!)
“How do you want to be remembered?” This is the question posed by the host of our monthly death café. She sweeps the living room with her piercing eyes, waiting for our answer. We stare back at her, not so much as slack-eyed, but reluctant to volunteer to share what I’ve quickly come to realize can be an intimate and self-revelatory piece of writing.
Of course, we knew that “write about how you’d like to be remembered. For what values? For what actions?” would be a writing prompt tonight. But when I sat down to do this exercise, I discovered it was harder than I thought it would be. Others in the room had a similar experience. Some folks opted out of participating; they declined to answer the prompt because they had worked a long time to stop caring about what people think of them. In any case, they argued, what’s the point in wondering? People will remember us through the lens of their own filter.
These are admirable reasons. To an extent, I agree with them.
But I think the point of the exercise was completely missed. For there is immeasurable power in asking - and answering - “how do you want to be remembered?”
In answering a question about being remembered after your death, what you’re really doing is describing how you want to live.
We don’t contemplate how we want to be remembered as some sort of backwards, people-pleasing exercise. We contemplate how we want to be remembered because it’s an exercise in uncovering our values. It helps us create a goal for where we’d like to be. The remaining task of our days, then, becomes how we will live it out.
Begin with the End in Mind
One of the concepts I teach my students at Bridle Up Hope are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people. My favorite is Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. Typical death doula, yes, I know. This habit encourages the student to plan out their life by first working backwards: where do you want to be? What goals do you have? How do you want to feel? Great! Now, what must we do to get there?
To help them untangle that hoard of admittedly deep questions, we work together to plot out what that “end in mind” could look like for them. We work together to craft their personal mission statements. This short document - no more than a paragraph or so - describes the things they’d like to be doing, along with their goals and values.
In the original 7 Habits book (the one written by Stephen Covey for adults, not the teenager’s version, written by Stephen’s son, Sean), the 2nd habit actually begins by asking that you visualize your own funeral. Specifically, you are asked to imagine your eulogy as if it were being given by the five people closest to you. What are people saying about you when they come up to the microphone?
Think for a moment about those potential statements: “he was a good father.” “She was a stubborn mule and could be hard to deal with, but god, I knew she loved me.” “He worked a lot. I know it was for us, but I never got to spend that much time with him.” “She inspired me to be a better person.”
What is an obituary if not a written eulogy?
The most obvious difference is that an obituary is printed and a eulogy is spoken; one is a speech, one is a piece of writing. Done well, they are exceedingly effective, beautiful tributes to the dead. Done well, they provide a glimpse into a rich life of one that once loved and laughed and ached and raged just as deeply as you and I.
Overall, both obituaries and eulogies can be a profound tool for rediscovering (or deciding) who and what you are. Perhaps that core has been buried or muted beneath a pile of society’s “supposed-to’s.” Writing your obituary asks “how do you want to be remembered?” And in so doing, it helps you reconnect with parts of you that may have been lost.
In the end, the point is not to hem and haw over whether or not “people will remember us however they want.” This is true and unavoidable. This is also disempowering and not super helpful. So rather, the exercise isn’t meant to peek into the future to see how people will recall us, for we can never control people’s -sometimes distorted - perceptions of us.
Instead, contemplating how you will be remembered is for you alone. It is an opportunity to ask yourself, what values do I want to uphold? How can I make that reflect, just a little bit, in my mundane, day-to-day interactions? How can I live today that is in line with the vision of how I’d want future generations to remember me?
And this is truly empowering. What freedom indeed.
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I am a death doula who believes in the power of sharing our stories. I help people explore their relationship with death, which inevitably includes exploring their relationship with life. I hold and honor the stories of the dead through writing unique obituaries, crafting entire memoirs, and planning bespoke funeral services. Learn more about my work and how I can help you at numbered-days.com.
This is a profound idea! I actually think about it from time to time, but have never tried to write it out.
Thanks for this Niki! I have a work in progress about writing an obituary because it is such a daunting thing, and a duty that is typically thrust on the unprepared! But then there are people who have pre-written their obituaries. I used to think that was really odd but I now see it as a favor to the family who will be left scrambling with another task in a stressful time.