BUCKET LIST UPDATE – No. 364: Write my own obituary and pick out my funeral music

I scratched another item off my bucket list on Sunday when I wrote my own obituary and picked out my funeral music.

I know that this bucket list item sounds both morbid and weird, but it wasn’t so bad. Looking back, I don’t remember why I even put this on my bucket list to begin with. While brainstorming for ideas, I think that I may have seen it on someone else’s bucket list and added it to mine on a whim. I’m sure that the funeral music portion of this item was inspired by my friend Josh Dewberry who said a while back that he wanted to have Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Simple Man” played at his funeral.

When it came to writing my own obituary, this was somewhat familiar territory. I’ve worked in newspapers for over a decade, and I’ve written more than a few obituaries and stories about people who’ve died. The vast majority of obituaries follow a very simple format, so it wasn’t hard for me to bang one out for myself.

One thing that I had to decide from the get-go was how to approach the obituary. Should I write it like I’ve died years from now or as if I died today? I like to think of myself as a realistic person, and I figure that I’ll go down like most of the men in my family, that is, I’ll drop dead someday from a heart attack, probably while at work, and sometime between the age of 60 and 70. This is the Peacock way. For the record, I don’t plan on dying any time soon.

With that said, I wrote the obituary as if I’d died today. I’ve head of students having to write their own obituary in journalism school or as an English assignment, but I’d never had to do this. I found that it’s a nice way of putting your life into perspective. It shows you how much and how little you’ve managed to accomplish in life, and it sort of motivates you to do more with the time that you have left.

Picking out my funeral music was actually sort of fun. I had a few ideas in mind, and I enjoyed listening to all of the 10 songs that I picked out on YouTube. If I had my way about it, I’d burn all of these songs burned to a CD and have them played as low volume background music at my visitation and funeral. Whether that happens or not, no big deal because I won’t know it anyway. I’ll be busy decomposing.

Here are the 10 songs I picked out. What do you think about them?

1. Dust in the Wind by Kansas
2. Dream On by Aerosmith
3. Come As You Are by Nirvana (Unplugged in New York version)
4. D’You Know What I Mean by Oasis
5. Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynrd
6. Creep by Radiohead
7. Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynrd
8. Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
9. All Apologies by Nirvana (Unplugged in NY version)
10. Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve

In the end, I enjoyed being able to scratch another item off of my bucket list even though it was one of the more unusual items on the list. How many of you have ever tried writing your own obituary? How many of you have ever picked out your own funeral music? Let us know in the comments section below.