Our Self-Written Obituaries – Kanza Javed, Lahore

Our Self-Written Obituaries – Kanza Javed, Lahore

Our Self-Written Obituaries – Kanza Javed, Lahore

The 87th death.

[Text and photo by Kanza Javed]

If literature touches you, you are no longer afraid of contemplating the otherwise melancholic subjects, like your own death for instance, a theme explore and re-explored countless times in fiction that now it seems like a realm everyone has walked on.

What I have learned from writers and poets is that death should not be a boring affair. It should be something magnificent, something mind-numbingly extraordinary and chaotic.

Thus my obituary should state an animated demise; the eccentric girl who wrote on her rooftop during those long, solitary, wintry midnights passed away calmly, like Tennyson’s beloved Shalott or Shakespeare’s vulnerable Ophelia, floating down the water, her body, her mind consumed by the waves. She left no money behind, just drawers filled with empty pages and dried ink. Her companion is not happy. She had promised writing made money, and he had believed her. Upon asking how he feels about the whole tragedy, he smiled the most wonderful smile and said, “Oh honey, we should have never built that swimming pool.”

Our Self-Written Obituaries invites people to write their obituary in 200 words. The idea is to share with the world how you will like to be remembered after you are gone. (May you live a long life, of course!) Please mail me your self-obit at mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com.