When All Is Said and Done
I guess I’ll sound morbid if I mention that I wrote my mother’s obituary last week, and she’s not even dead. This is the second time I’ve done it. By the time I actually need to turn one in, since she’s not ready to go, I may get it right. I may be able to capture the essence of this woman in just a few words.
It’s not morbid to think ahead. When one of my brothers died, my father dictated his obituary to me in a hotel room near the hospital where we had left my brother moments before. Listening to my father and then dictating the words over the phone to the newspaper were not the easiest chores I ever accomplished.
When my father died, I was called upon to write his obituary, although this time I could email it rather than call it in. Doing that, and seeing my words in print, I learned that in times of stress I make mistakes. My father wrote freelance articles for Southern Florist and Nurseryman. In the distraction of my grief, I wrote down Southern Living. Neither magazine looked me up to chastise me, but I chastised myself.
When my mother dies, I will be prepared. I won’t have to dry my eyes or cry through the composition of her death notice. I’ll just go to my trusty computer and call up the obituary, which I have in a neatly organized file along with a photograph of her looking as beautiful as she did the day I was born.
As much as I got my love of nature and my devotion to a messy but lively kitchen, I also got a morbid streak from my mother. I guess losing a sister at an early age made her precocious that way. Aside from writing too many poems, perhaps, about death, I have benefited from her lessons.
Some parents hide their children from death. Others help them to see that it is part of life. When I was four, my little green turtle died. What my mother did was help me to shape a coffin out of tin foil. Her nimble fingers made a sparkling but utilitarian coffin for the turtle, which we laid to rest under an azalea.
Now I like to read obituaries and not just to look for tips to jazz up my own. There are so many ways to say the same thing. Families work hard to capture the special memory of a loved one. Even clichés sound good.
When Martha Washington, the first First Lady, passed on, her notice in the American Mercury said something profound: “To those amiable and Christian virtues, which adorn the female character, she added dignity of manners, superiority of understanding, a mind intelligent and elevated.” What better definition of a good woman or a good mother?
My obituary for my mother, by contrast, is long winded. I try to say too much in too few words and end up a little clumsy. Perhaps one day I will be able to whittle it down. Just how important is it anyway to let people know how many times she volunteered in her children’s schools or how much she loved to garden?
My mother didn’t just teach me how to bury my critters. She quoted Shakespeare. Once she said she wanted this on her tombstone: “From her fair and unpolluted flesh, may violets spring.” That’s what Hamlet said when he found Ophelia. Right now my yard is sprinkled with violets. Lilacs and azaleas are lush with blooms. They remind me that death has no dominion.
Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 10 May 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2006.
It’s not morbid to think ahead. When one of my brothers died, my father dictated his obituary to me in a hotel room near the hospital where we had left my brother moments before. Listening to my father and then dictating the words over the phone to the newspaper were not the easiest chores I ever accomplished.
When my father died, I was called upon to write his obituary, although this time I could email it rather than call it in. Doing that, and seeing my words in print, I learned that in times of stress I make mistakes. My father wrote freelance articles for Southern Florist and Nurseryman. In the distraction of my grief, I wrote down Southern Living. Neither magazine looked me up to chastise me, but I chastised myself.
When my mother dies, I will be prepared. I won’t have to dry my eyes or cry through the composition of her death notice. I’ll just go to my trusty computer and call up the obituary, which I have in a neatly organized file along with a photograph of her looking as beautiful as she did the day I was born.
As much as I got my love of nature and my devotion to a messy but lively kitchen, I also got a morbid streak from my mother. I guess losing a sister at an early age made her precocious that way. Aside from writing too many poems, perhaps, about death, I have benefited from her lessons.
Some parents hide their children from death. Others help them to see that it is part of life. When I was four, my little green turtle died. What my mother did was help me to shape a coffin out of tin foil. Her nimble fingers made a sparkling but utilitarian coffin for the turtle, which we laid to rest under an azalea.
Now I like to read obituaries and not just to look for tips to jazz up my own. There are so many ways to say the same thing. Families work hard to capture the special memory of a loved one. Even clichés sound good.
When Martha Washington, the first First Lady, passed on, her notice in the American Mercury said something profound: “To those amiable and Christian virtues, which adorn the female character, she added dignity of manners, superiority of understanding, a mind intelligent and elevated.” What better definition of a good woman or a good mother?
My obituary for my mother, by contrast, is long winded. I try to say too much in too few words and end up a little clumsy. Perhaps one day I will be able to whittle it down. Just how important is it anyway to let people know how many times she volunteered in her children’s schools or how much she loved to garden?
My mother didn’t just teach me how to bury my critters. She quoted Shakespeare. Once she said she wanted this on her tombstone: “From her fair and unpolluted flesh, may violets spring.” That’s what Hamlet said when he found Ophelia. Right now my yard is sprinkled with violets. Lilacs and azaleas are lush with blooms. They remind me that death has no dominion.
Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 10 May 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2006.
posted by Felicia Mitchell | 9:29 AM
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