The sum of a life (in 125 words or less)

It’s a curious mess. Many writers start out with a grand vision and they attack the keyboard without any regard. They simply throw ideas, furiously typing anything that comes into their head.

Photo by Brenda,

I’m no different. Stray thoughts. Disconnected ideas. Sentence structure that would cause my 8^th grade English teacher to shudder. Missing subjects. Missing verbs.

Then I begin to trim, sorting out the good from the bad. The ugly stuff is easy to lop off  like a busy gardener with heavy shears. But then I  have to make decisions. There are  ideas that are well-crafted, yet distracting to the overall message. Those fall to the trimmer’s slicing and they hurt.

Working with a word limitation is when the real pain begins. The word-by-word analysis is excruciating. But in the end, you should have something that sings, that says exactly what it needs to say.

Admittedly, most of my blog posts  don’t have this level of self editing. And as you’ve read me over time, you may have cringed at misspelled words, hanging participles, and jumbled thoughts.

The toughest edit
Recently I was charged as the family writer to pen my father’s obituary. It was a honor, but the newspaper gave a 125-word limit. This would be one tough assignment. How can you express a lifetime of love, compassion, sacrifice and gentle cheer in such a small space? How can you compress 93 years into three paragraphs, an intro and a closing?

Although I tackled the project with trepidation,it turned into one of great joy because I had to write about the things that really mattered.

I started with the writer’s brainstorm, telling the whole story of this man’s life. It was 800 words long – still insulting short for such a man that he was.

Then, with family at the table, we began to winnow it down.
We cut out the things that were important to the world structure – what jobs he held, the clubs he was in, the honors he held.

We cut out the things that were important to family – where he was born, what school he went to, what he accomplished.

We wanted to find things that were important to God.

We sifted the facts until we found the man.

How about my own life summary?
As an exercise, I think I’m going to pre-write my own obituary. It’s not morbid or self-defeating. It’s a challenge. Am I living a worthwhile life? Are the things I’m striving after really that memorable? In the end, does God care about my titles? Does He care about a degree or a plaque that hangs in my office? Which of my efforts are going to last beyond the grave.

I’m trying to see things as He would. And a nagging thought is that God might not have enough to fill the 125-word limit.

So I’m counting that He’ll fill in the rest with just one word.

Grace.

What do you think? Click to comment?

UPDATE: Here is dad’s obituary, as it appeared in the Tahoe Daily Tribune.