Going out in style (literary)
Emily Phillips had a way with words, and she used it to write her own obituary, which has gone viral [hat tip: Althouse]. I bet we can get a good idea of Phillips’ personality by reading it:
It pains me to admit it, but apparently, I have passed away. Everyone told me it would happen one day but that’s simply not something I wanted to hear, much less experience. Once again I didn’t get things my way! That’s been the story of my life all my life…
So many things in my life seemed of little significance at the time they happened but then took on a greater importance as I got older. The memories I’m taking with me now are so precious and have more value than all the gold and silver in my jewelry box.
Memories”¦where do I begin? Well, I remember Mother wearing an apron; I remember Daddy calling Square Dances; I remember my older sister pushing me off my tricycle (on the cinder driveway); I remember my younger sister sleep walking out of the house; I remember grandmother Nonnie who sewed exquisite dresses for me when I was little; I remember grandmother Mamateate wringing a chicken’s neck so we could have Sunday dinner. I remember being the bride in our Tom Thumb Wedding in first grade and performing skits for the 4-H Club later in grade five. I remember cutting small rosebuds still wet with dew to wear to school on spring mornings, and I remember the smell of newly mowed grass. I remember the thrill of leading our high school band down King Street in New Orleans for Mardi Gras (I was head majorette). I remember representing Waynesville in the Miss North Carolina Pageant, and yes, I twirled my baton to the tune of “”Dixie””. It could have been no other way.I married the man of my dreams (tall, dark, and handsome) on December 16, 1967 and from that day on I was proud to be Mrs. Charlie Phillips, Grand Diva Of All Things Domestic. Our plan was to have two children…
So”¦I was born; I blinked; and it was over. No buildings named after me; no monuments erected in my honor.
But I DID have the chance to know and love each and every friend as well as all my family members. How much more blessed can a person be?…If you want to, you can look for me in the evening sunset or with the earliest spring daffodils or amongst the flitting and fluttering butterflies. You know I’ll be there in one form or another…
RIP, Emily Phillips. Sounds as though you had a very very good life.
When I read Phillips’ obituary, it immediately conjured up three widely-disparate literary precedents. I’m not saying she was thinking of these when she wrote her piece (in fact, I very much doubt it). But here they are, proving something-or-other about the universality of these feelings.
The first is Thornton Wilder’s beloved play “Our Town”. For those unfamiliar with the play, this passage occurs towards the end, when Emily (the central character in the play, who happens to have the same first name as Phillips)—who lived in a small town, married her high school sweetheart, and died young—comes back to observe an ordinary day in her life from that perspective:
Mr. Webb [Emily’s father] (off-stage): Where’s my girl? Where’s my birthday girl?
Emily: I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.
Emily breaks down sobbing.Mrs. Webb exits.
I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back…up the hill…to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.
Looks left and then out past audience and then to the right.
Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners…Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
To the Stage Manager
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?Stage Manager
No.Pause
The saints and poets, maybe””they do some.
The second is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince. The quote can be found here:
All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems… But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them… In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me… You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh.
In closing, I offer a passage from Leo Tolstoi’s The Death of Ivan Illych. I first read the story in college and it had immediately made a deep and lasting impression on me. I wrote about it previously here. Emily Phillips doesn’t seem to have the same sense of “terribleness” as Ivan does, but other aspects of Ivan’s thoughts remind me of what she wrote:
In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius ”” man in the abstract ”” was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? “Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.”
I wrote my obituary a few years ago and gave it to my youngest son to spare my wife and children the burden of doing so when they are in grief over my death. I gave it to my youngest son because he is the most like me, and will follow my directions to the T. Btw, my daughter inlaw, his wife, is due on April 6 with their first child and our 6th grandchild. Life goes on.
This brings to mind Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, where all the epitaphs in the cemetery were written by the deceased (post mortem). A favorite of mine is “Fiddler Jones”:
THE EARTH keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill–only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle–
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.
Along those same lines, Reflections, written by a mostly-unknown blogger and posted at a mostly unknown blog. Be sure to scroll down to the haunting short story by Lajos Zilahy, “But for This”.
snopercod,
‘But for This’ was a very worth while read.
Thanks for posting the link.
I’ve always liked the epitaph on Emily Dickinson’s gravestone: “Called Back”.
It’s a quote from a letter she sent her cousins the day before she died, which said: “Little Cousins, Called Back, Emily”.
Lovely! Let us follow in Emily’s footsteps and cut small rosebuds still wet with dew to wear on spring mornings.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and to know the place for the first time.”
Thomas S. Eliot
In.
Video – Judge Jeanine Pirro: Opening Statement – Obama Iran Deal
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2015/04/video-judge-jeanine-pirro-opening.html
Neo
Just another reason I try to read you every day!
TY neo and the wonderful other posters. The quotes and links were lovely.
Two things about Ivan Illych. Typical Tolstoy, he always gets the human details right.
If I remember correctly, the story begins with his friends and co-workers grieving his loss before quickly passing on to the more important discussion about how the new vacancy will affect the career paths of assorted people.
Second, the passage cited by neo (so true! so true!) reminded me of a similar passage in War and Peace where the green Nicholai Rostov, in the murderous fury of his first battle, is knocked off his horse and realizes the French soldiers are running his way:
I especially love the terrifying / hilarious: “Me whom everyone is so fond of?”
I believe neo is not a fan of Garrison Keillor, and he is a despicable wretched human being from all reports, in addition to being one of those folks whose shallowness has not been fully plumbed.
Nonetheless, I think Lake Woebegone Days is a work of genius and one of the best American books ever written. I am reminded of Keillor by both parts of snopercod’s post and neo’s cites.
The details of life so often overlooked assume a profound beauty in death.
Thanks to Neo (and to all you commenters) for these finds and your own thoughts. Nice reading for a late-middle aged man on an Easter Sunday.
May the circle be unbroken, by and by….
Here’s a recent obit that tells an interesting life story in a short space.It’s not the years in your life, but the life in your years that count.
“Captain Donald Alexander Malcolm Jr., 60, died Feb. 28, 2015, nestled in the bosom of his family, while smoking, drinking whiskey and telling lies. He died from complications resulting from being stubborn, refusing to go to the doctor, and raising hell for six decades. Stomach cancer also played a minor role in his demise.
Don cherished family above all else, and was a beloved husband, father and grandfather. He met his future wife, Maureen (Moe) Belisle Malcolm, after months at sea, crab fishing. He found her in his bed and decided to keep her.
Their daughter Melissa was born “early” six months later. They decided to have a boy a couple years later, and ended up with another daughter, Megan.
He taught his girls how to hold their liquor, filet a fish and change a tire. He took pride in his daughters, but his greatest joy in life was the birth of his grandson Marley, a child to whom he could impart all of his wisdom that his daughters ignored.
After spending his formative years in Kirkland, Wash. with a fishing pole in hand, Don decided his life’s calling was to yell at deckhands on commercial fishing boats in Alaska. As a strapping young man of 19, he moved to Dutch Harbor to fulfill this dream.
Over the next 40 years, Don was a boat cook, mechanic, deckhand, captain and boat owner. Although Don worked nearly every fishery in the Pacific Northwest at one time or another, his main hunting ground was the Bering Sea. He cut his teeth crabbing; kept his family fed by longlining halibut and black cod; then retired as a salmon gillnetter in Southeast Alaska.
Don had a life-time love affair with Patsy Cline, Rainier beer, iceberg lettuce salads and the History Channel (which allowed him to call his wife and daughters everyday in order to relay the latest WWII facts he learned).
He excelled at attempting home improvement projects, outsmarting rabbits, annoying the women in his life and reading every book he could get his hands on.
He thought everyone could, and should, live on a strict diet of salmon, canned peas and rice pilaf, and took extreme pride in the fact that he had a freezer stocked full of wild game and seafood.
His life goal was to beat his wife at Scrabble, and although he never succeeded, his dream lives on in the family he left behind.
Don is survived not only by his wife, daughters and grandson, but by his father, Donald Malcolm Sr; brothers Howard and Mike Malcolm; sisters Lisa Shumaker, Nicki White, Melinda Borg and Patsi Solano.
He also has many nieces, nephews, aunts and cousins who love him dearly, and deckhands who knew him.
He will be having an extended family reunion with his mother, Winifred Thorton; foster parents Marvel and Dutch Roth, brothers Larry and Steve Malcolm, sister Doodie Cake, and other assorted family and friends who died too young.”
I’d like to suggest the “Daily Telegraph” Book of Obituaries series …
It is a hoot!
Then there is the business of premature obituaries …
vanderleun:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/grace_notes/a_cutrate_resurrection.php
Apropos of obits, I always get a kick out of the
self written ones in our local paper.
Folks living to their 90’s these days & letting us
readers know they were *pre deceased by their parents* !!!
g6loq, you used the second link for both items.
Neo, I have never seen Our Town, though I’ve had opportunities to record the movie. It seems now that I must. The part you quoted got to me. My dad died about 30 years ago, my wife about 20, our mothers about 10, and her dad just last year. Too soon the dying of the light.
Just lovely, Neo—-thank you! I came across The Death Of Ivan Illyich last month and read it for the first time. It also deeply affected me, and I remember the passage you quoted in particular. Yes, how inconceivable that I too am mortal…surely the iron rule will not apply to little Shenanne, who felt the green magic zing from the grass through her bare feet and effervesce through her whole being; whose grandfather beheld her with such love; who carried away all the prizes. But I am learning by going where I have to go, and my obituary can simply use Carver’s words: “And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.” ―…
Great obit, J.J. !
Sam L. Says:
April 5th, 2015 at 3:40 pm
g6loq, you used the second link for both items.
Groan.
Here:
Daily Telegraph books of obituaries series
They’re all good. You won’t be able to stand/believe some of the things recollected.
I lead a boring live.
Pink Floyd “TIME”
from Dark Side of the Moon (most days on the charts)
On the latest Billboard 200 albums chart, Taylor Swift’s 1989 held firm at No. 1 for a fifth non-consecutive week, while AC/DC’s Rock or Bust debuted at No. 3. One more album arrived in the top 10: Mary J. Blige’s The London Sessions, which launched at No. 9……………………
………………….— Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon – No. 13 — Thanks to ultra-cheap pricing in the Google Play store (where the classic set was discounted to 99-cents in the tracking week ending Dec. 7), the album zooms back onto the chart at No. 13. It moved just over 38,000 album equivalent units last week, comprised mostly of pure album sales (nearly 38,000; up 940 percent). That’s the album’s highest rank since the Oct. 15, 2011-dated chart, when it re-entered at No. 12 following a new deluxe reissue. With 889 weeks on the chart, it continues to rule as the album with most charted weeks in the history of the tally. The next-closest album, in terms of longevity, is Johnny Mathis’ Johnny’s Greatest Hits, with 490 weeks.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.
Run Rabbit Run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!