death and writing
in which the author is somewhat morbid and rambles on to no particular end.
Tim Bray writes about Death Online today, and rather than the usual del.icio.us link and 2-sentence commentary, I feel like writing something a bit more expansive.
I wrote a will when I was 16 or 17, during a stretch of near-suicidal depression, I’ve been writing since I was 9, and I had to help sort through a coworker’s work after her death in a car accident, so I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing for a while.
On the other hand, I’m endlessly lousy about backups and such, so I don’t actually have a plan. Actually, right now I don’t have a will or even a living will. (C has a living will, because of his lymph node surgery a couple of years ago, but I keep forgetting.)
When I thought I was going to be a famous writer 
I decided that if anything happened, I wanted my friend Kat to get all of my papers and do…whatever…with them. C probably remembers that still. Not that I’d wish a small filing box and a very heavy rubbermaid tub on anyone. As it is, if I had kids I’d want them to have all that. I wish I had anything similar from my dad. It’s a real gift to be able to see inside somebody’s head from their writing, even if sometimes a little painful. I tried once a number of years ago to reread my early journals, I think with an aim to digitizing. (Yes, really.) But I just couldn’t handle myself at 12 or 13.
Would I want C to make a last post here? I don’t know. I’d almost rather write a “post this if I’m dead” and keep it in my drafts. Would I want this thing to stay here? Yeah, probably. That’s just an echo of my fondness for memorials. I love old cemeteries because the headstones are actually interesting. They have an art, a flourish, a sense of style even, and they show their age — in a good way.
Then again, now that I’m more physically and mentally healthy, I’m likely to have a really, really, really long time to think about it. Assuming I don’t fall off a roof or anything. (All of my grandparents passed 80; my father died of a heart attack at 45, and his half-brother fell off a roof & electrocuted himself when I was very small.)
Unfortunately, I am accident-prone….
