SHOULD I PUBLISH MY OBITUARY?
By Neva Bodin 

Walking and getting nowhere has never appealed to me. So, when I started on the treadmill at a Fitness Center, I was glad to see something besides a news program on the overhead TV. Frasier would make the time go faster and get my mind off this distasteful exercise, I thought.

It soon became evident that for some reason, obviously explained in the first half which I’d missed, Frasier’s obituary had been published, and his dad was now getting a boatload of snack baskets in sympathy.

However, Roz convinced an upset Frasier he wasn’t dead yet! So he should quit moaning because people thought he was, and start doing what he wanted to do in life. Frasier went home and started writing his own obituary. Wow! I thought, that’s really a neat idea!

            (An artist friend and I once joked about publishing our own obituary just to become famous—it seems artists are more famous after their deaths. We certainly needed some kind of help!)

            Frasier began listing all his accomplishments, not yet accomplished, that would sum up his life. I liked the concept.

            Everyone should have a mission statement, something we often only associate with organizations. A personal mission statement declares your purpose, your reason for existing, what you hope to accomplish with your life.

"Set up road markers for yourself, make yourself signposts; consider well the highway,
    the road by which you went," says Jeremiah in chapter 31, verse 21. (NRSV) 

Writing an obituary near the end of my life will surely make me consider the road by which I went! But writing it earlier will help me consider the road down which I am going! Establishing signposts—signs guiding a traveler—will keep me on the intended path and help me reach my mission statement.

My obituary is going to be long if I write it, so I better start saving up for publishing costs in the Casper Star-Tribune now.