For a few years now I've had an idea. I've thought about how terrible it is for the dead to miss their own obituaries. I've often wondered if a person's quality of life might be bettered if she/he knew how appreciated they were. I've had the idea to memorialize the living, not merely the deceased.
I've seen newspaper writers vie to be the ones who set down those words describing those lives as past tense. And I've witnessed thin, hungry and absent obituaries. Unattended memorials. Wordless friends, affection starved grief.
I've read final books, written in someone's last years, and memoirs written in what we call someone's mid-life. We're really lucky if people we love and admire set down words, create art and leave us with something to hear them by, after they die. But it doesn't mean we should wait until they're gone to celebrate them, and what they mean to us, while they are still alive and meandering, imperfectly along, weaving in, like knitted yarn, through their lives and ours.
It can really embarass someone to tell them how much you appreciate their presence in your life. I have friends and colleagues for whom these words would make their skin crawl with disgust. I work for and with and have working for me, people for whom words like this would make them run screaming.
The person who thinks they are the best is the same narcissist who thinks they are the worst.
Some of us are very hard on ourselves. And positive or negative words from those we admire feel the same: like a lie.
I used to work with someone who would have never let you finish a sentence of sappyness. Macho. Or macha, as sex-specific romance language goes. Compliments and criticisms went to the same place with her: on the floor. She wasn't having any of it. Just get the work done. And have a drink after work. Or six. But then one morning, on a day everyone in my generation will remember, she died. Destroyed, evaporated, murdered. Few words left behind. To write any felt impossibly difficult and necessary both.
The difficult and the necessary.
What eggbeater is about. As you know, I sometimes say what no one wants to hear. I sometimes speak for those who can not. I hope to speak from the heart of my industry. {all is fair in love & war} I write words free of sponsored agenda. I work inside real kitchens with real people and real issues, personal and political, domestic and international, human and historical.
I want my idea to become real. I'm going to start writing Living Memorials.
Some of them might be formal, some of them all-inclusive, some of people you have already heard of, some I'm sure don't even know who I am, some of people I've known my whole life.
They will be about people whose lives I find wondrous, complicated, inspiring, joyful, radical, humble, tough, sharp, mysterious, generous, sexy, intense, quixotic, adventurous, frightening, enviable, quiet, colorful and more or less, depending on how you see and experience them yourself.
And I would like you to join me.
If you take up space online, please consider this an open invitation to write a Living Meme too.
There are no rules, none that I'm going to make, at any rate. I just want to see more celebratory words set down about people who are alive and actively living, doing, being. Foibles and all.
Love your idea, Shuna, and look forward to reading your memorials. I know they will be illuminating, inspiring, heartening and thought-provoking
Posted by: Nancy/n.o.e. | 05 December 2010 at 08:44 PM
love love love. yes. ok.
Posted by: rebecca | 05 December 2010 at 09:14 PM
Thank you for this :)
Posted by: s.b.j. | 06 December 2010 at 11:47 AM
So very true. I try with effort to make sure the people in my life know what they mean to me and how I appreciate them and sometimes they look at me like I am a nut job. Which could be true too! Thanks Shuna!
Posted by: meimei | 06 December 2010 at 01:24 PM
just sorta did this, in a post about some of the frugal/green influences on my life: The Many Faces of Frugal. My thanks to some dead, some living. Your post is very timely...I need to remember to voice my thanks to those I know without Internet. thx
Posted by: Dmarie | 06 December 2010 at 04:03 PM
A good idea whose time has come. I know someone that deserves this treatment--
Posted by: heavy hedonist | 06 December 2010 at 10:02 PM
Shuna, count me in.
Posted by: Jomo Morris | 08 December 2010 at 01:32 AM
What a wonderful, gracious idea. I feel part of my life is holding the memory of many whom others will never know, but with whom I was fortunate to share love. The hardest art commission I ever made was a pair of matching urns for the children of one of my best friends. I felt honored they asked me, but it took a long time; tears are blinding.
Posted by: naomi | 08 December 2010 at 10:27 AM
i like what you say
Posted by: kim | 08 December 2010 at 10:33 PM
Hey Shuna,
Glad to see you are blogging again as am I, after a brief hiatus.
this was a beautiful piece of writing!
for me, I sometimes write love poems about my friends.
I look forward to reading one of your living memorials as I'm not sure what one would sound like. I think, if we are writers (especially via memoir) we do this in our own way. and you're right, people need to hear these things while they are alive!
Posted by: Hungry Girl | 09 December 2010 at 11:16 AM
Shuna, this is a beautiful post. We should celebrate the people we love while we can.
Posted by: Nisrine | 11 December 2010 at 03:19 PM
Every once in a while, I remember why I love you. Miss you, Shuna. Memorialize the unknown people, please, not just the known. 'Nobody is a nobody'. And nobody could write it like you could....
Posted by: Wendy | 11 December 2010 at 04:38 PM
Chef -
This post, and the ones it sprung from resonated with me deeply. I lost my mother last year, and she did not have much to say about the whole affair. It makes me feel like we should perhaps treat death/dying like we do life. Push up against the walls, assess, discuss and plan it with regard. But also, in walking among the living, slap each other on the back and say how much fun it is (to use your metaphor). Beautiful blog, thank you.
Posted by: Sarah Wong | 12 December 2010 at 01:30 AM
My partner Vicki died in 2003 after 18 years together. I never said the things I wanted to and realized that when I presented her eulogy. With my partner now I tell her every day how wonderful she is and applaud her accomplishments, it is so important to value someone else's travels in life.
Posted by: Linda Kinsman-Saegert | 07 January 2011 at 10:03 AM
Shuna,
LOVE your idea. My high school is celebrating their 25th reunion this year. We want to memoralize those who have passed away and those alive. We are planning on planting a tree and encasing a bronze plaque. We are stumped how to honour the living and deceased equally in written form. It must be all encompassing, simple and short. Do you have any suggestions or direction we can go?
Thank you so much!
Posted by: Debbie | 26 February 2011 at 09:26 PM