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It will take some maneuvering, but maybe there’s some way you could look up your obituary before you are not able to look up your obituary. That is, see what others are going to read about you when the time comes. Actually, if you’ve got enough money or if you have a sufficiently wide-enough reputation, the obituary is probably written already, tucked away in the lawyers’ files—with room for additions, of course. But for most of us, we first go through this life’s final door,  and then the time comes for an obituary.  It will be inaccurate, of course. Obituaries always are because they leave out the realities of life, bad and good.

Obituaries leave out our sin and error, all the emotional and material  pain and suffering we have caused. Look up ‘the seven deadly sins’. That’s what obituaries leave out, what we do to others. They leave out mention of our selfish ways. They leave out mention of all the damage and debris scattered along our path, intentionally or unintentionally, avoidable or unavoidable. Obituaries don’t, nor should they, cover all the truth

But obituaries will mention the good we may have done. That’s what obituaries are for—and let us all work in our time remaining to make those parts of our history worth recording. What the records won’t show, however, will be the behind-the-scenes hope and comfort we may have brought to others, the guidance and direction we may have been able to offer at various times.  That’s OK, though. We don’t do that for the credit, at least, we shouldn’t.

In brief, it’s not what lies behind in our lives that is important, not what conventional obituaries tell the world, but what lies ahead, through other doors, doors yet to open.