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I swear to God that I believe you’re tired of me talking about the trauma of 40 (although I did punk a 21-year-old yesterday by telling her that I could be her mama); but, I’m hoping that you’ll bear with me.

As I’ve been thinking about what’s going on with me, I looked at two things. First, what would be my final words to the people who came to see me off, to bid me a final adieu? How would I wrap this thing up?? Second, I considered the people who constitute my community because I’m having different versions of the same conversations in multiple sister circles.

I wrote my obituary as my way of asking myself whether I was spending my time on things that matter. It was also my way of being honest about what I am willing to work on (or not), a type of #unapologetic self-acceptance. I will admit that this exercise was probably the one of the saddest self-inflicted experiences of my life. It totally changed my perspective on grief. I wrote it from the vantage point of, “If I should die today”. In that instant, I felt somewhat frozen. It took me a minute to get started. I saw all of the unfinished business of my life.

In the days following this exercise and after I finished crying over myself, I realized that grief is greater than missing the person who died; it is lost opportunity. Everything that is unsaid or unfinished is just that. There is no more fixing it. There is no more working on it.

In evaluating the unfinished business of my life, I perceived anew the bitterness of being undisciplined, the sour taste of fear, and the haunting questions regarding risks of the heart that I should’ve taken. Since nobody gets to finish everything, it gave new weight to enjoying the work as well as the reward of finishing. It also seems to me that much of life is process rather than conclusion; thus, learning to enjoy the process is more important than I thought before I imagined my death.

Despite feeling like I’m violating my own privacy….here you go!