The prompt said "Write your own eulogy"
Cause your story is yours to tell.
This first attempt of writing a self-eulogy in a way felt scary, and of course, silly. I like to believe I will live a long, deep life. And if so, then I still got time to come back to it and make changes as I grow. But because life is not promised, I would rather have silly than nothing at all. We don’t like to think about dying, and of course we shouldn’t dwell on those thoughts. But we can all agree that we become a bit more conscious of life in remembering that we are not here forever, and what’s more, is that we can’t even know how long we’ll be here for. You don’t have to write one if you don’t feel like it, but if you do, here is mine (where I actually was so afraid to even use first-person narrative and ended up using third-person instead). Life here on earth and onto the next, our stories will always be ours to tell.
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To start with stark honesty, she didn’t like the idea of her body being buried. It felt suffocating and lonely just to think about it, she said. She did consider cremation, but never brought up the topic, for fear she would sound morbid or people to start getting worried about her. She did confide in me once, that she would love for her ashes to be kept in vials or urns or jewellery, and taken by the people who loved her. A piece of her everywhere, scattered in a couple of homes. In the bracelet around her sister’s arm, and in her cousin’s keychain, and hanging from the rear-view mirror of her best-friend’s dream car, and worn in the pendant of the necklace of her tattooed lover. Or, she said, if you would find it eerie to carry her around like that, then press her ashes into a vinyl record, a sweet collection of some of her own songs and voice-memos. And if that’s too expensive, then just toss her ashes into the ocean and she might as well learn how to swim against a riptide. You see, whether living or dying, she will always go for adventure.
She loved to write and sing and take photographs and fall in-love easily, with almost everything. Most of the time she said, if those journals weren’t going to be turned into books or movies, then she would be just as happy to pass them on to her children, if she was lucky enough to bring another human into this world. She said just in case because you never know, she didn’t want her children to have such a hard time learning about their mother like she did her mother. Just in case.
Her playlists of indie-folk and soft rock and soul, played all the time when she took a shower, or was cleaning her room or taking a ride. One song she loved in a special way was “Buityful” by Coldplay, even low-key wished for it to be sang on her funeral. She had a hundred of unfinished songs all written on her guitar, some unfinished because she doubted her English, and some because she felt she was being too open in a world that could take advantage of that honesty. She said whether she became a world touring artist or just a singer people knew from local bars in town, she would create a happy life either way.
She loved the idea of traveling, and traveling far. As much as people saw her as a gentle soul, there was secret fiery wild side of her too. And you could see glimpses of it, from the way she chose her clothes of soft fabric and two strap shoes, and her double pair of ear-piercings and her love for nose-rings and her dark braids with purple tails. And how she talked and wrote in her manifestation journal about bikes in Amsterdam, and stroking cats of Istanbul, and plunging into hidden parts of the sea, and connecting trains and flights to get to another bucket list destination. She didn’t like it when people thought she was just being naive and overtaken by the thrill of it, she said it was more than that. Just like how she watched the Liverpool team play football and felt tears in her eyes whenever they started to sing “You’ll never walk alone.” It was always more than that.
Of all the things she loved, she said she simply couldn’t live without God, Jesus to even be more specific. She believed to be loved by God so much that she liked to call herself Beloved. Beloved, a name that came along with other “secrets” like she would say, secrets she never spoke of, a matter of “that’s for me to know and you to find out.” She was so honest with God and told him about everything, I bet those secrets themselves, the dreams, the fears, the books she read, including “From the notebooks of Melanin Sun.” She found God in scented candles and flowers and the sun and moon, in a good cry and in a genuine laugh, and tea and orange juice, and in the purple cafe at 21472 in Kisutu street, and in every face, in every race. Her greatest prayers were these; One, to never be separated from God, come things known or unknown. Second, that if you met her in person, or in the words she wrote or the songs she sang, that you………. feel……… loved!
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