Hey Doc! Add This to My Final Wishes

I have another document that I want someone to read after I die.

I have completed my Advance Directive. Stated what I do and don’t want done at the end, at my end. Stated how I feel about hospice and about pain meds (just enough, please, but not too much). 

Having turned 70 this past year, these details and plans for my final days now come into focus on a more real basis.

I still have to make the final arrangements, which I will do. I like the idea of choosing a tree where my cremations ( water cremations) will be mixed with the earth beneath that tree (with the right composition of soil and minerals to be nourishing to the tree and not destructive). With a tiny medallion at the bottom with my name on it. Simple. Respectful of the earth. And not in a wooden box. Besides, I can get claustrophobic. (Thank God my sense of humor is still alive and well.) 

Before I am simply a memory, I just have a little more to say first, please.

I want to include a document,in the midst of all the other instructions about my wishes, that tells something about who I was. This one could be titled something like My Final Thoughts. 

Why isn’t this kind of document included as part of what we want done at the end, what our final wishes and last words might be? Why can’t our voice, our last words and thoughts, be part of our final ritual? 

I want to have one last say about who I was. Who I was as a child, a little girl, a teen, a young adult, all the way up to an elder. You get the point.

I want to have this read by someone at the end, to get one final chance to have who I was be seen and be heard. 

It seems to me that this is what we long for our entire lives. To be truly seen, heard, understood. To have our being and essence acknowledged. 

I have no family that I keep in contact with that will come to any memorial service. I was an only child . No siblings. And I chose to have no children. I was married but got divorced and, although I had several relationships after that, never remarried and have been on my own for a while now. 

When I was a child, we moved away from the few relatives that I came to know, but did not intertwine lives with. No one’s fault, really. Life happens. It’s ok. 

My parents were immigrants so most of the people that I am related to live in another country. I didn’t grow up with them, did not feel close to them. We are related by blood, but not by intimate, everyday connection. 

We are all alone at the end anyway, I believe. The final trip is one that we take solo. Some of us may have others around to help usher us out, which I would think might be a comfort, but that final leg of the trip is ours to take alone. 

And yet, I still feel the urge to have someone acknowledge who I was while I was on this earth. To give a nod to the spirit that was within me. The love that I felt for the earth, its creatures and plants and trees. My love of art and paintings. Paintings that may mostly end up in the trash. My love of writing and how those pieces will fade as well. My sense of humor. My kindness and connection to others, especially random strangers that I sometimes felt a deep momentary bond with that delighted me. And I hopefully touched them for a moment. 

There was depth and longing in me. Although quiet, I had a voice within. A voice that I finally learned to express toward the end, when I finally felt the freedom to do so. After a lifetime of trying to please others and finally realizing that this is an impossible goal. Finally learning that the person that I truly needed to please was me. 

I am grateful to have reached that awareness while still alive. What a delight to speak the truth and not worry about what anyone else might think. Perhaps a bit late in life, but better late than never. 

So, maybe I will write a letter to be read at the final step. Pay someone to read it at the tree where my ashes will be left. Let the tree know who I was, who is going to be resting at their base. Thanking the tree for the space and letting it know I will be a good neighbor. I will become part of it. 

Does it really matter, at the end, to have someone read this? Perhaps this is silly. But, why not design the last ritual and memory for myself? I can’t control if this will really be carried out, but I can at least state my wishes. At least acknowledge for myself who I was. 

I think that this is what families and friends do at memorial services, at what are referred to as celebrations of life. 

Maybe there needs to be one final form that we can, if we choose, fill out. With one question at the top. Who were you in your life? Anything left unsaid? 

Maybe it’s ok to do this for ourselves. Our voice can be part of that final celebration, part of the final goodbye. 

Now that I think about it, maybe I can start letting people know now, while I am still alive, more of who I am. That I am present and here. What I feel. My joys, my sorrows, my loves, my regrets, my Self. 

I am grateful to be able to do this with my writing. Grateful for those who read what I write and perhaps connect to parts of it. I am grateful to be able to have paintings that are part of me and to even have some of them hanging in others’ homes. My writing and paintings have pieces of me within them. 

I am grateful and humbled. To be seen, heard, and felt while I am still here on this earth. Before it’s time to say goodbye, so that maybe some others may know a bit of what I might include in that final document. And, every now and then, remember me with a smile.