In a Galaxy far, far away, decades from now…

Having (some time in the far future) left this mortal coil, someone will have to select a picture for the obit. Imagine what would happen if you could look back…

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They picked this photo because I “look like myself.”

Which is interesting, because I distinctly remember being bribed with a sandwich five minutes before it was taken and mildly annoyed at the sun. But sure, this is me now. Forever cheerful, slightly overexposed, and incapable of blinking.

From my spot in the obituary, I have an excellent view of everyone reading about my life, which has been aggressively condensed into six paragraphs and one questionable anecdote about my love of Cheezits.

If I am lucky, those with the real good stories will have been silenced before me. But who knows?

People react in categories.

First, the Squinters. They lean in close like they’re trying to solve me. “Is that…? No… wait…” Yes, it is. You’re not wrong. I did look like that. Occasionally.

Then there are the Speed Readers, who skim my entire existence in under four seconds. Birth, school, career, family, death—boom. Trying to guess; natural, criminal, or self-inflicted. Gone. I respect the efficiency, honestly. I spent years procrastinating; they’re making up for it.

My favorite is the Overreactor. They gasp at the age. “So young!” they say, regardless of whether that’s true. I could be 97 in this picture and they’d still act like I was cut down in my prime. I appreciate the commitment.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to The Society for the Protection of LGQTB Ducks, The Home for Recovering Hermaphrodite Republicans, and Satanists for Jesus. They were all dear to his heart. Another trick would be to use my first-grade picture, which will definitely get more readers.

Joe Broadmeadow

Someone always laughs at the line about my “famous sense of humor.” That’s doing a lot of work for some very average jokes, but I’ll take it. One guy actually said, “Yeah, that was true,” and then told some story about something that probably never happened, which feels like a win.

And then, inevitably, someone says, “He looks so happy.” Yeah, for a dead guy!

I mean… yes. That was the point of the photo.

You think they’d pick the one where I’m mid-sneeze? Bleeding? Just getting over the flu? Or the DMV picture? No, no. You get Peak Me. Curated Me. Me on a good day with decent lighting and at least three functioning brain cells.

If I could add a caption, it would say: “This is not what I looked like when assembling IKEA furniture.”

But I don’t get captions. I get eternal silence and a permanent smile.

Still, I try to make it count. I hold this expression like a promise or maybe a suggestion. Not that life was perfect—far from it—but that it had its moments. Enough, at least, to catch one on camera.

So people look at me, and I look back, and for a second we meet somewhere between who I was and who they imagine I must have been.

What I think would be amusing, sort of breadcrumbs for the cause of death crowd, would be crazy “donations-in-lieu-of-flowers” entries.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to The Society for the Protection of LGQTB Ducks, The Home for Recovering Hermaphrodite Republicans, and Satanists for Jesus. They were all dear to his heart. Another trick would be to use my first-grade picture, which will definitely get more readers.

Sort of a death clickbait.

Then they scroll, or fold the paper, or move on.

Every person you know or will know can be divided into two categories:

The ones whose obituaries you will read someday, and the ones who will read yours. That, in a nutshell, is the course of one’s life; the reader or the one read about.

They, or you, will be dead.

For now, I stay here.

Smiling.

Honestly? Could be worse. Hermaphrodite Republicans? Talk about an oxymoron.

Requisecat in Pace, MF

(Author’s note: You may want to start posing now; one never knows. And from some of the choices I’ve seen for Obit photos you might want to get out in front of that. Just saying.)