Legacy Matters

Death in Bath

The BBC's story about the Seventh Annual Great Obituary Writers' Conference is called Death in Bath, or a meeting to die for.

Of course, nothing will beat last year's conference when Tim Bullamore  was in the midst of extolling the glories of Bath, site of this year's conference, when the news came that President Reagan had died.  His presentation was ruined as the audience reacted to the news with surprise, confusion and uproar, so the hapless man grabbed the microphone and bellowed, "Reagan's dead and he'll be deader.  Let's go on with the show."  But I digress.

This year there was general agreement that obituaries are short stories with death the incident that shapes them.

To Dr Cory Franklin from America, a great collector rather than writer, of obits, it is the life-changing details of lives that he finds fascinating.  He quoted two recent examples. John Frankenheimer, the man who directed such Hollywood films as The Manchurian Candidate and The Birdman of Alcatraz, was the man who drove Bobby Kennedy to the hotel in Los Angeles in which he was shot dead.  As a result, Frankenheimer was plunged into a depression which he never got over, his career ruined.

Always more about life than death,  the obituary will reshape and reform with blogs, video and audio offering greater opportunities to tell everyone's life story. 

Why not tell it your story your way?  You may have many stories at different stages of your life that if you don't write down in some fashion, you will come to find that you forget them.  Maybe, this is the time to start writing down the stories of your parents before they die.

You can be creative as you want with the abundance of digital tools available now.  You'll probably discover patterns in your life you never realized, maybe even a deeper meaning and purpose when you start to think about what really matters

It's your life, you're the expert on your life and your Legacy Matters.