by Matthew Caverhill

Created on: January 05, 2010

Amongst your thoughts regarding your funeral preparations and seeing to your legal affairs after you pass away, there is another aspect of that process which you may want to look into: perhaps you should consider drafting your own obituary. While the idea of writing your own obituary may seem at first to be morbid and perhaps a little bit narcissistic, in reality, it is a noble course of action.

After all, with the seemingly endless amount of work to be done by those who loved you following your death, adding the responsibility of drafting your obituary into that mix may be a burden that may be too much to bear for whoever gets that assignment. For some, the thought of trying to summarize someone else’s life in print may be daunting to say the least, and it can make an already heartbreaking situation that much more stressful than it needs to be. In those situations, there are also some rather tight time constraints involved, meaning there is a lot of pressure on whoever gets that task to finish it in a quickly, and under those circumstances, it would be understandable if an omission or outright mistake was made, which is the last thing anybody wants.

With that in mind, you have to ask yourself, who knows you well enough to summarize your life with the clarity that you could? In most cases, that would be a very short list, and unfortunately in some cases, there may not be a single person who knows you in the kind of detail to do the job effectively.

When it comes down to it, if you write your own obituary when you are of sound mind, you can accurately reflect your life and put its events and your personal relationships in perspective. After all, a good obituary isn’t just mourning your death but also celebrating the accomplishments of your life and acknowledging the things that you are most proud of, even if those things are not immediately apparent to other people. By preparing for this eventuality, you can take your time and craft your final autobiographical written words months or years in advance. Thus, you will also likely have the time to alter it as circumstances change in both your life and in that of your family. In doing so, you may also discover that in doing so, you gain some measure of perspective on your life, and it may prompt you mend some fences, which is always a good thing.

However, keep in mind that if you do write your own obituary in advance, you should make your loved ones aware of your wishes, and place it amongst the documents detailing your other final arrangements so that if and when the day comes when it is needed, it is easy for others to find.

So in conclusion, while on the surface, writing your own obituary may seem like a grim task, in the end, it can be an invigorating exploration of your own life and serve as a lasting testament to your existence and a loving farewell to those who made your life so special.

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