Random Thoughts About My Own Untimely Demise
2004-06-15, 3:42 p.m.

Entry number 2 today. For the previous one, click the back button at the bottom.

I just told someone I�ve been thinking about weird things and, when he asked me what, I had a hard time articulating it.

I�ve just started listening to this book, Next of Kin by Joanna Trollope. And the main character�s wife is dead and the story essentially begins with her funeral. Then I started thinking about what would people think of me if I died today? Or tomorrow? What would I want them to find?

I think I wrote about this before but it�s just so strange for me. I think of what I�d like people to remember but I think that people tend to remember the tangible more than the intangible. Will people remember that I loved them and that I was a voracious reader and good cook and awful at sports or will they remember that my closets are a mess and that I have enough toilet paper to stock a third world country? Will they wonder why I never clean my refrigerator all that thoroughly or will they remember things we did together? I mean the people who are charged with gathering my things, straightening up my affairs and handling what there is of my �estate.� You know, should PJH and I die in a car wreck or something.

Then I think of what I want. What I think is cool. What I would want to know, to find, if a loved one of mine died.

And it�s about *them* I�d want to know. I�d want to find journals and find out who they really were when all was said and done. I�d want to find the things that they valued and kept to get a glimpse into what they loved. I�d want a momento of them so that when the memories began to fade I�d have something in hand to remind me that they once loved me.

I don�t think I�d care if their CDs were logically ordered or if they had spare toothpaste or if I could find all their paid bills and like that. Yet, I think about reorganizing my own life so that people will say, �Wow. She was prepared. � As if that matters. As if someone who loves me would care. Except that if that loved one was my partner, that would comfort her. If I were the first to die, finding my things in an organized and well thought out state would comfort her. She�d feel loved by me. She�d feel like I cared enough about her to be sure that, in her grief, she didn�t have to think about where to find my insurance policies and who gets what of mine. Maybe that�s why I�m so obsessed with organizing my stuff and getting things ready Just In Case. I don�t plan to die, but no one does. Do I want PJH to have to think about things like paying the cable bill and the trash service bill and the electric bill? Or do I want her to know that things are taken care of and she has some breathing room? Of course, I want her to have some space to breathe, to grieve, to heal.

I guess I�m thinking about this because we�re thinking about wills relative to the boys. We have to have life insurance and all kinds of other things in place before or soon after the boys are officially adopted. Because we can�t be irresponsible with them. PJH has to ensure that I am the one to care for them should she die and vice versa. That the survivor would have enough money to do what needed to be done and to send the boys to college. To be sure that those who love us have momentos of us that are meaningful to them.

Because in a time of grief, no one is rational, no one makes sense. So we have to prepare for it. And it makes me sad. So then I feel weird in general. And I need to move on right now, think of something else, get my thoughts focused on work and on home and on getting those things accomplished.

Sometimes love isn�t romantic. Sometimes it�s about making the bed, washing the dishes, cleaning up kid puke and making wills. Sometimes it�s about �hard stuff� but in the end it�s all about the other person. And not about you at all.