Every Word Counts by Nora McInerny
For most of us, an obituary is the last public record of our life, yet we rely on others to write it. Author and reluctant grief expert Nora McInerny thinks this is just plain weird. She shares why she and her first husband, Aaron, co-wrote his obituary and how being a bit loose with the facts of his life got to the truth of his existence. Funny, irreverent and full of love, this obituary went viral and stands as a testament to why writing our ending is good practice for being alive.
Take 10 is an experience focused on finding solace, building solidarity and sharing solutions when it comes to serious illness, caregiving and end of life. If there’s one thing we hope you take away from this experience, it's the invitation to create the narrative of your life through to its end. May you find comfort and joy in the process of digging into what it means to embrace the good, the bad, and the messy about the gift of being alive!
January 15, 2021
Transcript
Hi, everybody. I’m Nora McInerny. I’m a podcaster, an author, and a person whose job it is to talk about difficult things, so I guess that’s what brings me here.
I’ve written four books. My niche is funny stories about sad things. But my most popular piece of writing, hands down, is not one of my books.
It’s sad. You’ve got to stay humble.
The most popular piece of writing I have ever written is an obituary.
When my dad died in 2014, my three siblings and I sat together in a row on my parents’ couch and attempted to write his obituary.
I don’t know whether you’ve ever done a group project, but they’re terrible. They’re awful.
It was me, my brothers, and my sister going back and forth, trying to summarize our dad’s life and decide what had mattered most to him.
Was it that he was our dad? Was it golf? Was it his immense pride in being a fourth-generation Minneapolitan?
In case you don’t know what that means, it means he lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In the end, we chose golf as the main headline.
The irony of this entire exercise is that our dad wrote infomercials for a living. It was his job to summarize things in 10 minutes or less. No muss, no fuss.
Our dad could have banged out that obituary and turned it into a stellar sales pitch.
Why hadn’t we asked him to do it?
Our dad had cancer for at least five months. He was in the ICU. It was evident that he was dying. Even he knew it.
During one of his final days in the ICU, a nurse came in and asked, “Mr. McInerny, how are we doing today?”
He said, “Kelsey, I’m kind of dying.”
We all laughed. She looked like she wanted to disappear into a puff of smoke.
The point is that we all knew it, but we couldn’t say it. We couldn’t ask our dad, “What is important to you? How do you want to be remembered?”
We got the basic details right. Everybody filled the church basement and ate a bunch of ham sandwiches and mayonnaise-based salads.
But why didn’t we ask? Why was that so hard?
That obituary was not popular. It got the job done. People showed up for the funeral. But all it really said was when, where, and what.
Six weeks after my dad died, my husband, Aaron, died too.
I know. What a bummer. It really was.
Aaron had been sick for three years with brain cancer, and we knew he was dying too.
The night he entered hospice, we went to the emergency room. The doctors told us to go home because there was nothing else they could do.
We disagreed. We knew there was still a lot we could do.
We left the emergency room and got pancakes. Then we picked up our son from daycare, fed him dinner, put him to bed, and watched Game of Thrones.
This was 2014. It was still worth watching.
While we were sitting there, I paused the show and said, “Aaron, will you do something for me?”
He said, “I’m not going to scratch your back. I’m the one with cancer. You scratch my back.”
I said, “We’ll settle that debate later. Will you write your obituary with me right now?”
He said, “Okay.”
He talked, and I typed. We laughed. It was like every other creative thing we had ever done together.
When we were finished, I closed my laptop and said, “I hope we never need that,” even though we both knew we would.
I needed it two weeks later.
I sent it to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and they published it, which was good. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure they would.
I’ll tell you why. I’ll recite part of the obituary:
“Purmort, Aaron Joseph, age 35.”
Just the facts.
“Died due to complications from a radioactive spider bite and years of crime-fighting against a nefarious criminal named Cancer, who has plagued our society for far too long.
RELATED
