In May, I reach the official retirement age, so this is my final column. My bucket list consists largely of books to (re)read. The list of things I will never do includes extreme sports, and quite a few non-extreme sports.
A few days before I retire, I will give a farewell lecture, open to all. It’s a strange genre, rather like making arrangements for one’s own funeral. In preparation, I’ve been doing something I used to do when I started learning Dutch, namely reading obituaries in Dutch newspapers. They are short, unlike those in Canadian and British newspapers. I thought the brevity would make them easier to read. I was very wrong. They are highly coded texts, and I soon learned the euphemisms for suicide and euthanasia.
The fun part is decoding the family relationships, especially those of the deceased (Tom) who left behind both a current (Anne) and ex-partner (Marie). It’s complicated, certainly when Marie is the mother of Tom’s children. Are the children included in Anne’s ‘death advertisement’? Or does Marie place her own message, with the names of the shared children? Or both? I have seen it all. On one occasion, competing advertisements appeared over several days. I was tempted to go to the funeral to see who would be sitting in the front row, who would give a eulogy, and whether Anne or Marie would be pushed into Tom’s open grave.
Going to the funerals of strangers could be a ghoulish post-retirement activity.
These announcements sometimes specify the colour or type of flowers. A few days after my farewell lecture, I am going to a conference far, far away. I really don’t want people to bring me flowers as it would be a terrible waste. My macabre reading has taught me that I should say to those who might attend: geen bloemen, geen bezoek.
I’ve enjoyed writing these columns, sometimes commenting on current UM news, sometimes on wider issues. Many thanks to the Observant staff and my readers for their encouragement and feedback. Observant will remain a valuable source of UM news, though it rarely publishes obituaries.
Sally Wyatt, professor of Digital Cultures