They Gave Me 125 Words

This past week, Gordon Atkinson wrote a beautiful tribute for a friend who died. The week before, David Rupert had been charged with the task of putting his father's life into 125 words. David found the task daunting, and considered what it might be like to write his own obit.

All of this got me thinking (writing), which first appeared as a comment on Gordon's piece. Some of you have probably, therefore, already seen this...

Upon Writing My Obituary,
I Exceeded the Word Count by 14

She loved a good poem, a good chickpea with garlic and spices,
and a good afternoon of finding orange mushrooms or wine berries
in the woods. She once fixed an iron, tried to save her grandmother’s chair
(but the butter-yellow paint came off in bits), and tried to fix words so people could maybe find their own fixing within. When she was a girl she had short wavy hair, with a curl in the middle of her forehead. Her mother read her that rhyme about the girl with the curl who “when she was good was very, very good” but “when she was bad she was horrid.” She wanted you to know (as if you couldn’t have guessed) that even though she grew up and styled her hair straight with a blow dryer, the curl was still really there.

This post is offered for One Shot Wednesday.