To be read in the highly unlikely event that, at some undisclosed time in the future, I am on my deathbed:
So, the unthinkable has happened and I am about to die. Perhaps, given the sum of human experience up to this point, I should have seen this coming. In any case, as I contemplate my final moments on this earth, I can think of only a few small requests to you, my living friends/family/creditors–
- Tell someone dear to you that you love them.
- Tell someone not so dear to you that you love them too. Not someone you hate, just someone you don’t know that well. Like maybe the guy who responds compulsively to mass e-mails at the office with funny little quips. I think his name is Jason. Anyways, that guy is alright, and it sure would be funny to see his face when you, who barely know him, profess your love to him. I wish I could see it but, as you know, I’ll be dead.
- Rearrange all the possessions I left behind alphabetically and by date of purchase. Some guesswork will inevitably be involved here, but I trust you can ballpark it. Once you’ve done this, donate all my possessions to a charity that helps blind children learn to appreciate beach volleyball.
- Invent a new kind of synthetic butter. The market for synthetic butter has really slowed down recently and that bothers me on a spiritual level.
- Cremate my body and scatter the ashes on the white sandy beaches of whatever Caribbean country is currently fashionable for celebrities like Ashton Kutcher. Someplace expensive without any foreigners around. A year later, retrieve my ashes and from the remaining DNA, remake the dinosaurs like they did in Jurassic Park. But even cooler.
- I think maybe I left an avocado on top of my fridge in 1993. You might check on that for me.
- Live every day like it’s your last. By which I mean, run around in a state of panic making ill-conceived declarations of regret, squandering your money, and weeping profusely.
- Lie to my children about my life. I don’t mean embellish or make better, I just mean deceive. As in, “Your father really enjoyed swordfish and his real name was Barney.”
- Pay my back taxes. This isn’t so much a request as your new legal obligation per the state. This could get expensive since I stopped paying taxes around the same time I made that avocado purchase.
- There’s a folder filled with reading material I keep under the mattress of my bed with big black letters on it that say DO NOT OPEN. Whatever you do, DO NOT OPEN.