I am aware that this post is basically a mid-life crisis, though I hope that it’s mostly in concept a mid-life crisis, and not in math. Some people buy something extravagant that they don’t need. Some people go on a sabbatical. I apparently decided to get emo and write a blog post.
I’m not sure when it started exactly, but at some point in the last year I started thinking a lot about mortality. The topic in general, but most specifically mine. It’s something that I have pondered before, but typically in passing and not frequently. That shifted. I think about it a lot now.
Here’s where I pause to make clear this is not some write-up on my secret depression. I think I can make the distinction that I’m not dwelling on the subject. It’s more like wondering. Considering. It is something I would rather not be spending too much time thinking about though, and I am worried it’s the kind of thought process that may never abate fully. I’d prefer this not turn into my white whale.
I ponder what it would be like, the afterward. My main issue is that I can’t wrap my mind around it. The presumption of an actual afterlife requires me to make too many leaps in logic and faith. What’s left then is… nothing. And nothing is something I cannot envision. It’s as hard to grasp as trying to imagine everything. I don’t love the idea of simply not being able to think thoughts anymore. Of just not being. Or being not. It’s a bogeyman that I know is waiting for me and regardless of how much it scares me to think about, I continue to think about it.
It’s a problem, and I am in the business of solving problems, so I’ve also been trying to think what I can do about it. What can I do to either stop thinking about the topic, or at least have my thoughts about it be fruitful instead of frightening? There have been ways I’ve tried to reframe my thinking, but none of them took hold. I tried to think about my life not as a story I am the main character in, but as the story of my children, for whom my passing would be a painful but necessary chapter. Or thinking about how the whole period of nothing before I was born doesn’t seem to bother me mentally and if that didn’t bug me then I shouldn’t expect a bunch of nothing after to be such a big deal. Or figuring that maybe I’ll be lucky enough to live a nice, long, fulfilling life and then by the end I’ll just feel like “Yup. I think I can be done now.” Those worked only a little bit.
Trying to reframe my thoughts about death led me to reframe the entire idea of what I was trying to do, though. What was I really worried about? And, what’s more, what could I really have any influence over? I can’t change what’s waiting for me. I won’t be the guy who produces the neural interface that lets everyone live in robot bodies forever. I can create a legacy of some sort. I think the ship has sailed on my writing the Great American Novel or Screenplay. But I do have this suddenly super emo blog.
I’ve listened to too many heart-wrenching podcast stories about individuals losing a cherished loved one and being heartbroken that all they really have to remember them by is a single voicemail or some other flavor of lonesome memorial item to want to have that be the case for my family. I’m already in that trap, though. Much as everyone likes to gripe about the supposed narcissism of social media and “selfie culture”, there’s going to be an indelible record of the day-to-day lives of those individuals that will become absolutely priceless when they are gone. Janelle and I though are still in the standard mode of taking tons of photos of the children and photos of ourselves maybe a handful of times each year: anniversaries, birthdays (maybe), group photos at Thanksgiving and Christmas. These aren’t really representative of us and they don’t make a terribly rich portrait of how we lived and what we were like.
My plan is start taking photos of US more. Not the kids, but us. Janelle helping the kids with food. Me pushing Maya around in the stroller. The kind of small moments that will trigger little memories beyond the holiday/birthday monoliths that so typically fill the long-term landscape. Hand the kids the phone, let them pop off some goofy, off-kilter portraits.
That’s only part of the puzzle. Having the ability to browse through my life’s progression and look back to “remember when” is one thing, but it still only scratches the surface. It tells stories, but it doesn’t answer questions. Death feels like it takes a person away and leaves questions behind and I think that might be one of the biggest things that bothers me. How will everyone cope? In what ways will they remember me? Will they feel that things have been left unsaid or unfinished? I won’t be able to give answers after I’m gone, so why wait.
I will record instructions about what to do when I’m gone. Everything from the nitty gritty to how to handle… me… to what kind of funeral/memorial/whatever would work for me, to the kind of food and music it would be nice to have, to what to do with my stuff. Janelle and I already have a living trust that outlines those things, but that’s very clinical and may still feel difficult to interpret or follow through on. Providing that information in my own voice will hopefully go a long way towards clearing up any hesitation or confusion.
Again, though, that’s not everything. Sure, that may make some of the immediate aftermath simpler to deal with but it doesn’t solve those lingering issues. Was I proud of you? What did I think about my life? What was meaningful to me? I have these blog posts, but they’re pretty topical. I try to make them broadly applicable, even if they are about my life pretty specifically. So I’m going to write about my life and more specifically about, and to, the people in it.
Every year, on or around my birthday, I’m going to write a letter to each of the children, and to Janelle. It will be a breakdown of what in their life has been meaningful to me. Major milestones and what it meant for me to be a part of them. My hopes and dream and concerns for their future. It will be everything that I would want to be able to say to them if it turned out I was gone the next day. I hope one day to have these letters form a nice collection. A clear retelling of our lives, and of my frame of mind throughout them. I want it to be the case that if someone at some point down the line wants to conjure me up, they simply need to double-click a file and there I’ll be, clean and clear on the page. It’s a little selfish, because who doesn’t want to be remembered, but more than that I want those words to be the comfort that I can no longer directly provide. I don’t want to fade away a mystery. I would prefer to be, quite literally, an open book.
This has finally started to quiet my mind on the topic. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about death entirely, but I don’t think about it as much. What’s more, I haven’t smoothed over the issue or simply hoped that I’ll forget about it. It’s a direct, proactive solution. It’s a way to help keep my memory alive in a way that doesn’t involve heavy lifting from the ones I love. It’s a way that I can provide what I think they will need, the intangibles that gnaw through grief — theirs and mine.
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