Make Your Own Damn Gravestone

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. "- Woody Allen

Having worked in an obituary department for a few years has caused me to doubt any and all post mortem eulogizing. I've been forced to deal with family members bickering over the ordering of their names in the list of survivors. I've had long meaningful conversations about how best to slip the name of the deceased's mistress in without making it too obvious to his widow. I've had to apologize profusely for mistakenly adding the image of an anchor to the obituary of a man that drowned. And I've spent far too many hours arguing over the finer points of grammar with sobbing widows.

Like Sean Penn spouted in The Thin Red Line, it's all about property.

On the front page of today's paper is a colour photograph of an old classmate of mine that, as of last week, became the most recent casualty of Canada's military involvement with Afghanistan. I hadn't even recognized him until today, even though he's been all over the news recently, and I probably would have went on not recognizing him had it not been for the school photograph that accompanied today's article. I recognized immediately the familiar faux bookshelf used as a backdrop in my own collection of early nineties school photos.

The article, which chronicles his funeral that was held yesterday, reads like a high school reunion. Familiar names that I haven't thought about in years follow quotes that glowingly speak of his kind heart, empathetic nature, and devotion to his country. Which, I'll admit, is not the guy I knew in school. Where was his empathy when he would blow plastic shoelace ends with pins sticking from them into the backs of my legs through a straw? And where was his kind heart when he was shitting on Kenny's jogging pants after shoving them deep into one of the boy's gym locker room toilets?

But I digress. People change, bygones, water and bridges and all that.

When I die, though, do me a favour. After the doctors have removed every ounce of useful flesh, flush the rest and go to the Triangle for a few Stella's. Focus on my faults. Talk about how shitty it was when I ditched you for some new girl in my life. Make hilarious references to how lazy I was. Make sure you mention my poor posture and how I would wear the same clothes until they were just a couple threads barely covering my nipples.

And if for some reason I die in a way that makes the newspapers, for the love of God don't let them use any photograph of me in front of a faux bookshelf backdrop.