“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
- Ernest Hemingway

Sometimes I ask myself, how do I want to be remembered? What would people say about me at my funeral? How would people, my family and friends especially, describe me in the obituaries? True it sounds a bit morbid. I mean basically what I try to do is imagine my own funeral and my own obituary. But at certain points in my life, I find it to be quite an interesting exercise.

The first time I tried this exercise, I was asked to write my own eulogy. I met this man while I was studying in the UK. I was attending the University of Bath and this man, Ken Johnston, picked me up while I was trying to hitch a ride to campus. He was in his 60’s and was working as a writer for the local Rugby club. He wrote and organized the contents for the program booklet which is distributed at all home games.

We started to talk and I discovered that he was single and lived alone in a small apartment just outside of town. He asked me if I could use some extra money as he needed a hand at his apartment from time to time. He was too old to do too much extraneous physical activity and keeping his apartment dust free was too much for him. Since I was a student who could always use some extra money, I said yes.

One weekend, I was over at his place cleaning up his study, I found a lot of newspaper clippings. They were articles written by him about various topics published in the local paper. Apparently, he was quite a celebrity. He used to have a column in the local papers where people would write to him about their problems and he would suggest some solutions. The articles covered everything from changing lives to managing finances.

That was when he told me about his eulogy. He told me he was in the army during World War II stationed in France. He was young and he was very scared, so he started to write his own eulogy. He discovered that what he wanted to do in life was to help as many people as he could, and have people remember him for his contributions towards their lives.

And that was what he did. Immediately after the war, he returned to Bath and joined a lot of organizations which were dedicated towards helping the unfortunate, the poor, single mothers who lost their husbands in the war, the homeless, orphans and many others. He made it his personal quest to help as many people as possible. Only in his old age did he stop physically helping people and that was when he started to write in the local papers.

After I read some of the articles he wrote, I asked some of my friends who were active in charitable organizations about Ken. All of them knew who Ken was and all of them had a deep respect for him and what he did to help unfortunate people regardless of their background, race or religion.

After I left the UK, I didn’t really keep in touch with Ken. He wasn’t that tech savvy so he didn’t have an email address. I got a Christmas card from him back in 1995 and he sent me a congratulatory letter when I got married in 1996. I received news from one of my former colleagues that he passed away not long after my wedding.

I guess when I think about it again, Ken was probably my first mentor. He was the one that instilled the desire to help people not matter what the circumstances were. It was an honour to know him.

I remember this one Sunday evening after I finished cleaning out his store room, we sat down to dinner and he pulled out this piece of paper, nicely typed. I read it and realized it was his eulogy. He told me that he hoped that was the way people would remember him and he hoped that was what someone would say at his funeral. I hope someone was kind enough to read it at his funeral.

So, imagine yourself in spirit, witnessing your own funeral and you hear all these people, family and friends pouring their hearts out telling people how much you’ve affected their lives. People from all different walks of life come up and say that you’ve changed their lives forever.