Once you answer that, you have the only blueprint you will ever need for how to live today.
Dr. Irvin Yalom, a famed existential psychiatrist, wrote that “the physicality of death destroys us, but the idea of death saves us.” When you search for you are engaging in a powerful therapeutic exercise called existential journaling . who will come to my funeral when i die pdf
What would have to change in the next 12 months to move these names from “Unlikely” to “Probable”? Once you answer that, you have the only
If you’re asking because you worry about being forgotten, know this: being remembered is not a single great event. It’s a thousand small things — the time someone told your story at dinner, the song someone hummed on a rainy morning, the photograph tucked in a drawer. Those are the things that come to a funeral and stay in the pockets of those who go home. What would have to change in the next
Neighbors might come, or not. There was the woman from next door who once watered my plants when I was away — she would show up, hands still dirt-stained from some backyard project. The barista who learned my complicated coffee order would be there, surprising me by remembering my middle name. Little connections, often unnoticed, would show up in that room and claim space.
My mother, if she was still alive, would be there with the photographs she’d never stop organizing. She’d insist on being by the casket, smoothing a hand over a sleeve as if tucking me in. She’d take charge of the program, which songs to play, which poems were allowed — a kind of domestic altar-making that felt like love wrapped in meticulousness.