A to Z 2024: F is for Final Words

For The A to Z Challenge this year, I am focusing on everyday holidays. Each day there are multiple unusual things to celebrate.  Every day of the challenge I look for an event taking place that day and pair it with the letter of the day.  I have also made up 5 holidays to coincide with the vowel days of the challenge.  At the end of each post I will share a special song of the day for that day's letter.  At the end of the month, these songs will be assembled in a to z keepsake playlist on Spotify.  Every day is a celebration, let's unwrap today's together. 

April 6th is Plan Your Epitaph Day

By John Salmon, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

 

The first Plan your Epitaph Day was in 1995.  

I decided to do something a little different today in describing the holiday.  Instead of using my own words I am going to use some of the text found on the Plan Your Epitaph Day webpage from Daysoftheyear.com It's not the entire text just some snippets

There comes a day in every person’s life when they have to face the inevitable, 

. This day, Plan Your Own Epitaph Day, is the perfect day to set aside some time to figure out what you’re going to have to say about yourself before you’re gone.

, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Ludolph van Ceulen had the first 35 digits of Pi inscribed on his tombstone, as he was the first to calculate this delicious sounding number out to that many decimals. 

 Some of the activities you can do to celebrate this day, is go to graveyards and look for inspiration in the stones of those who have already passed. 

 

this is one more way to collect Epitaphs that have already been written to help inspire you to write yours! 

 Another thing you can do to celebrate this pasttime is to have picnics in the graveyard with likeminded friends. 

Together you can sit and brainstorm on what you’d like your final words to the world to be. 

 

Plan your own Epitaph day is a day for reflection on our own mortality, and thinking forward to what kind of legacy we want to leave behind for those who come after us.

 So take some time to think about where you’ve been, what you’ve done, and what you’d like to say to those who come after,

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April is also  National Poetry Month.  I have decided to write a poem about today's holiday.  Mainly because I didn't create much of my own content today.

Today's poem will be a limerick

Today plan your own epitaph

Play it straight or go for the laugh

But don't wait 'til next June

Best to do it soon

You can't chart your last day on a graph.

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Here is another quick poem

Today's song of the day

is Fear by Lecrae

The Spotify pla list for my A to Z challenge is now a week old and 6 songs long.   

Well Week 1 is in the books.  Feel free to catch up on any of my posts you may have missed.  In your comments, you can let me know what words you might consider as an epitaph.  

To go to the home of the A to Z challenge click here, to see the 2024 master list of participating blogs click here. Enjoy the 2024 A to Z challenge, and Happy Holidays!

60 Years in 60 Days 2013

 

2013: The Beginning of the year of limericks

I turned 49 in the year 2013.  I remember going with my wife and kids to the Cook County forest preserve in Elk Grove where there is actually, wait for it, a grove of elk.  We were hanging out watching elk, climbing trees, and having all kind of birthday fun when an idea came to me.  For the rest of the year, I would write a limerick each day and post it on Facebook for all  to see.  

Eventually the task got a little much for me and I did not write 365 limericks that year, but I wrote well over 200.  While my limericks never quite went viral, I am sure a few of them made a number of  my friends, family and acquaintances sick.

The year of limericks was a bit of a turning point for me in a few ways:

While I have dabbled in poetry along with other kinds of writing and studied poetry while obtaining a degree in English, I never considered myself more than an occasional  poet.  The limerick experimented jump started this part of my writing.

Facebook has become a curator of my limericks.  Thanks to Facebook memories my limericks from 2013-2014 pop up on the anniversary of the day I wrote them.  The November 7th 2013 popped up again today.  It is about knock knock jokes.  

While knock knock who's there jokes are lawful 

A lot of them are just plain awful 

When you knock knock who's there 

You best be aware 

There is such a thing as a doorbell.

My last 500 days of 50

Last 500 Days of My Fifties

5/12/2023 - 9/22/1964

 I'm in my late 50's.  I was born in 1964, the last year of the Baby Boomers.  

The year before  I turned 50, I wanted to do something special to commemorate my last year in my 40's.  On or about my 49th birthday I was with my family visiting the  elks in Elk Grove Village.  Elk Grove Village is a suburb of Chicago located near O'Hare airport, It is where I grew up and where my parents lived until very recently.  There is a forest preserve in Elk Grove that extends into neighboring towns like Schaumburg.  Ever since I was a kid there has been a herd of Elk maintained by the Forest Preserve in Elk Grove.  

As my family watched the elk,  an idea came to me.  I could write a limerick, and  post it on Facebook every day until I turned 50.  I wasn't completely successful in my quest, but I do believe that I wrote and posted over 300 limericks over that time period.  Why limericks? I never did figure that one out, but I think I owe a lot of the personal poetry renaissance I have been going through the last 15 months due to my year of limericks.

As my mid 50's turned into my late 50's I have been thinking how to celebrate the last part of my 6th decade.  No "elks" moment has hit me and I'm not sure my FB friends want a year of haikus or anything like that.

A couple of months ago an idea came to me that instead of having some special activity, I could just be more purposely reflective during the time.  I decided since my 50's were ending that I could perhaps extend the year   to 500 days.  So starting tomorrow I find myself in the last 500 days of my 50's.

Today is May 11th so that means that there are 20 full days left in the month.  There are 30 days in June, 31 in July and August and 22 days before my birthday in September.  That's 134 days before my birthday. There are usually 365 days in a year, but 2024 is a leap year so there are 366 days from  September 23rd, 2023 and September 22nd 2024. Some may wonder why I don't count until September 23rd, my birthday.  The answer, of course, is because that will be the first day of my 60's.

So, what do I plan to do with this time period that 1150% greater than Lent? First of all, give it up for Lent, it's a great religious observance, and it doesn't get nearly the credit it deserves.  I'm not sure really.  I think what I'll do is when I'm reflecting on my adventures in ageing, or perhaps doing something for the last time in my 50's I might blog about it here.  But mostly I'll do what I encouraged my 11 year old future sister in law to do 8 years before I courted her sister, and that is cherish the time.  

In the Bible we are encouraged to number our days. By delineating the last 500 days in my 50's I am inviting myself to live purposely.  It is of course very possible that I publish this post and then regular life and my ADHD conspire that I never think about it again.  This is part of the reason why  I'm publish posting this on my blog and on Facebook so I do pay  attention during these final days of my fifties.

Dear Facebook friends, this doesn't mean that there will be no more limericks.  It just means I'm commemorating the end of this decade differently than I did the last.  In fact, I think I feel a limerick coming on now:

I really thought it would be nifty

To write a limerick a day 'til I was fifty,

The days in my  fifties are numbered

I only have left 500.

I'll live them up, cause the will end swiftly.