What if this is my last post?
This might sound a little morbid, but the question has been haunting me a little since I ran into Aleida’s page. You see, Aleida was tragically killed in a car accident and her life was snuffed out without warning. She was a blogger and her husband wrote a final post in memoriam on her site. While I was obviously touched by her husband’s post, the thing that struck me the most about her site was scrolling down and seeing what she had written shortly before her death. The last post was a post remembering 9-11 and the ones before were about crafts and Aleida’s everyday life. It just struck me hard that she had written about her mundane, her everyday life, her little things, and then it was gone. So it just made me think about what people would think if they saw my last words. Would they see some silly DIY project or a recipe on chicken? Doesn’t that strike you as weird? I would want for my last words to be something deep and meaningful, a tribute to my kids, the love story of my marriage, my deepest passions and convictions written bare for everyone to see. …but that is the point isn’t it?
We usually don’t know when we will be snuffed out…gone…obliterated. So we write about our kids bugging us, and what is blooming in our gardens. We write about what we hot glued this week and how we made this dresser from the trash into a new desk for our kids. We sometimes decide to share our souls and tell our blogging friends what is going on in the deepest depths of our heart, but who could possibly do that everyday. Who could do that in preparation of our imminent death? How morbid.
When I was pregnant last year, I wrote letters to my boys and my husband. Letters that assumed that this c-section would be the last of me. I was terrified of dying and a small part of me truly thought that 2 major surgeries was too much to ask of a benevolent God and that this one would be the end. Of course it wasn’t and those letters sit unopened along with all of the “stuff” I wanted them to keep like their first shirts, my journals, photos, etc, etc. How morbid.
I don’t really have a point. I just have been musing about this weirdness that is life and blogging and what happens when it ends. Have I left enough for them to know me by? Have I written enough in their journals to let them know how much I really love them? Have I taken enough photographs? Have I made them safe? Have I given them what they need? Have I saved the memories I know they won’t remember? Aleida took photos with her kids. She made a point of making sure she put herself in the picture more. I’ve been trying. I want them to have photos to remember us together, but I hate it. I hate being laid bare in photos, but I don’t want to leave them with no memory of what we looked like when they were littles.
Of course, my boys are boys and most probably they won’t care all that much about the memories of this time in our life. I’m quite sure that most of this “remembering” is for me. Unless of course, I am snuffed out…gone. Then maybe, they will need more of me in photos and words when they don’t have me in person. How morbid.
Do you think like this? Do you wonder what life would be like if you were gone? Do you wonder what your last post might be?
