Obituary Card Quotes

IT IS SENSIBLE of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not pass away. Every day millions of people pass away—in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation, e-mails to the corpse’s friends—but people don’t die. Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath, join their dear ones in heaven, meet their Maker, ascend to a better place, succumb surrounded by family, return to the Lord, go home, cross over, or leave this world. Whatever the fatuous phrase, death usually happens peacefully (asleep) or after a courageous struggle (cancer). Sometimes women lose their husbands. (Where the hell did I put him?) Some expressions are less common in print: push up the daisies, kick the bucket, croak, buy the farm, cash out. All euphemisms conceal how we gasp and choke turning blue.

True love is above all reliable. So we do the best we can to follow through, and that sometimes, maybe often, especially with our elderly mothers or mothers-in-law (if we are lucky enough to have family elders), we get a little frazzled and cross and want to scream; but we still wait in a doctor's office, or drive to a hair appointment, or play cards all afternoon, or drink sweetened tea when we prefer it plain, and we may think bad thoughts once in a while. And that is _okay_. Better than okay. The wisest women both here and gone have known--and demonstrated-- that our actions speak loudest when it comes to love. They also know we will never regret spending this time, regardless of how we feel about it sometimes, because mothers were once daughters and that's the way life is meant to roll. (p. 140-141)

She lived in a semi-destroyed city. When evil attacked it, half the people left or just went missing. Houses were left open. There was no interference with the search. Looking for the remains of former paradise or the generated evil, it didn't matter what she will find, it was all of equal value. Detached from history, from time, from life, she wandered around other people's homes in seeking. Knowing no rules, no laws, no belonging to anything, she existed in one of the cities somewhere in the west of one of the worlds. A city that can replace any city from any time as accurately as possible. It is the combination of the incongruous. This is all from everything. Absolute Chaos. No having knowledge even about herself, she was just looking for and solving something. She was finding manuscript texts that could not be solved. They were musical, religious, historical, belonging to different epochs, cultures. She was finding cards: playing, gimmick, geographical; periodic printing editions. "There are no more heroes" is written in an old newspaper. A hint of the same is visible in modern newspapers. "Everyone recounts what has already been said”, «The world loses magic”, "The world is deprived of naturalness”, "People suffer from morning frustration, and not only morning". The world is losing fun, the natural joy of life, people have become closed and stop communications with other people, full of uncontrolled emotions. Latest news reports: there are fires, deaths, floods, global warming. Obituaries are replenished every second. The world loses faith. The world is increasingly covered in darkness. War is inevitable. Mass destruction or disappearance. Plague approaches. The world's response to all this will be unpredictable. This will be the last time people will be surprised, even though many have forgotten how it happens.

Mary had known what to do. She and Debbie had worked everything out in advance—whom to call and in what order: the funeral parlor, the credit card companies, the friends. There was already an obituary ready to go. Leonard’s photo would be in all the newspapers, on Twitter. It’d be in the black-and-white photo montage at the Oscars, with someone singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in a ball gown. Alice made some of the calls to friends—she and Debbie split up the list. No one was surprised. Everyone was kind. Alice cried during the first few, nearly unable to get the words out, but then she got used to the rhythm of the conversation and found that she was able to make it through. That lasted a few minutes and then she was crying again. Alice hugged Mary longer than she’d ever hugged a relative stranger in her life. This was how people felt about their midwives, or platoon mates, or fellow hostages—they had seen things together that no one else would ever fully understand.

Andrei rested on a bench directly in front of a grave that belonged to: 'A father, hard worker, and beloved friend.' He leaned back, resting in the cemetery, and with each second, his desire to know more about this man 'Yeah, he’s a father, hard worker, and beloved friend. Weren’t we all at some point? What’s his kink? The worst thing he’s done to a person? The greatest thing he’s good at?' he thought. That’s what Andrei wanted to know. Not titles the man himself would disapprove of. What good was a proper impression in a cemetery filled with thousands of proper impressions? One must be indecent. So Andrei closed his eyes and imagined the father who worked hard and was a beloved friend. Maybe his kink was that he needed to do it in public—in the restroom after a date or at church during mass. Maybe the worst thing he had ever done was work so hard for his family that he never once saw them. Maybe the best thing he was good at was giving gifts to his friends. Yes, that’s it. He never gave money or handed them gift cards, but instead gave his brothers exactly what filled them the most. One year, he gave a notebook to his buddy John with the same line written over and over in painful cursive. The line said: 'Happy Birthday, you get thirteen hours of my life' and repeated until you could see the traces of hand cramps squiggling for life on the forty-second page. 'What a good man,' imagined Andrei. 'Hell of a mate.