Chat GPT Told Me I Was Dead
Like any writer worth her salt, I turned my own death into a writing prompt
Chat GPT just told me I was dead, so just in case AI is onto something, I'm leaving instructions:
After I Die: VI
To whom it may concern:
When I die, I need you to throw me a party. The grandest and most fabulous party you can imagine. Hire burlesque dancers (make sure they wear their best pasties) and drag queens. Commission a life-size portrait and plan a parade. Make it spectacular. Make it the biggest and best this town has ever seen. I want the key to the city and a posthumous Ivy League degree.
Banksy said we die twice, "Once when you stop breathing, and another time, a bit later on, when someone says your name for the last time".
Because you know me, I know you'll understand that I'm feeling rather inconvenienced by the reality of my first death, but the second? That just will not do. Therefore, as the floats pass by, move through the gathered crowd telling the wildest lies about me, and spread rumors that will circulate for long after my death (at least one should involve an ancestral legacy of piracy and a buried treasure protected by an unbreakable curse. Extra points if you work vampires in there somewhere, naturally).
Have the crowd follow the parade to the service. During the wait until the doors open and the red carpet (did I mention the need for a red carpet?) is rolled out, you must hire a series of mysterious characters to speak only in riddles, or Pig Latin, or some obscure dialect of a long-dead language. Give a handful of folks instructions to be VERY DRAMATIC and allude to TERRIBLE THINGS, sotto voce, at random intervals throughout the event.
Invite strangers from the street, pay each of them to scream something mostly incomprehensible about being my long-lost secret lover, or my long-lost daughter, or my long-lost evil twin. Stage a series of realistic fake fights between my long-lost loved ones and film it all. Think Jerry Springer (if you are too young to know Jerry Springer, make sure you perform due diligence and watch at least one season prior to my untimely passing). Edit your footage into eight well-crafted story arcs and post them on YouTube in an episodic fashion. Promote it until it becomes the most popular Telenovela the earth has ever seen. Though dead, I expect top billing in the credits. I’m not looking to be a star, I want to be a legand.
To summarize, I will settle for nothing but a full-on ruckus.
Next, ensure my funeral is open mic, but give careful instructions that all speeches must be delivered slam poetry style. Pick a random panel of judges from the assembled guests, and make sure to provide them with numbered cards (preferred font: Helvetica Bold) to hold up with their scores.
Boo them (the judges, not the poets) often and loudly, no matter what they decide. There will be three rounds, each one progressively shorter. When the winner is chosen, tell them the prize is to be the one to lay with my body and keep it company until the burial. Make this sound like a huge win; I have faith in you.
Fill my eulogy with the most ridiculous superlatives. Make up best-selling books I did not write, and convince people I wrote them. Tell them that I saved the children, saved the day, saved the world from imminent disaster. Convince them all I was actually a superhero. Then, when they ask about my powers, wink suggestively. Refrain from explaining yourself further. If you must say negative things, make them incredibly negative, terrifying, really. Give it all you've got; what do I care if they all hate and fear me now? Remember, we want to keep 'em talking.
Make sure to track down the most giant disco ball in the whole, entire universe. Oh, strobe-style black lights are probably a good idea, too, just for additional dramatic effect. You know, I did always like dramatic effect.
Find a way to turn the disco into a piñata and end your eulogy by telling everyone they must take turns being blindfolded and hitting it with all their might. Don't make threats, but you can certainly leave them with the lingering suggestion that negative outcomes may result from giving it any less than their best.
When it finally cracks, make boatloads of glitter rain down on everyone. So. Much. Glitter.
If anyone complains about the glitter or whines about the mess, kick them out immediately; it's clear they were never my people. Those who love glitter (which really should be everyone) should be instructed to immediately lay down and make glitter snow angels. I will be watching, and this will make me very happy.
While we are on the specific requests, make sure you dress me more outrageously for this "once in a lifetime" event than you can imagine (if you struggle, this is where the burlesque dancers and drag queens come in; they will be glad to assist). I'm talking bedazzled, bejeweled, and Beyoncéd. Not just one outfit, either. It's my only funeral ever, and I want as many costume changes as Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour and at least that much applause.
Oooh, sell merch too. Perfect.
After the funeral, usher everyone who will fit into the town hall and auction off my clothing. With each listing, be sure to share the thrift store or discount shop where I made the purchase and the ridiculously low price I paid. Pause for loud murmurs of approval and awe. I want acknowledgment for my superior thrifting skills, even in death. Make sure everyone knows which Goodwill I went to find that 1980s vintage designer sequin dress for 9.99 because I'm still quite proud of that one (7th Ave and Indian School if you were wondering).
Actually, on second thought, make Goodwill sponsor this damn shindig; I sure spent enough time and money there to make that only fair. I mean, are they really going to say no to a dead person? What kind of greedy monster thrift store are you to ignore a girl's last dying wish? I trust you have the contacts to make this happen.
Make a spectacle of burying me in the gaudiest coffin you can find (like Liberace meets Elton John meets the collective winners of RuPaul Drag Race) inside the spookiest crypt imaginable (I'm talking cobwebs and witches and things that go bump in the night). Please ensure there are hundreds of candles, but offer no explanation for how they were lit.
There will, of course, need to be sequins and sound effects. Maybe a firework or two and a military fly-by for grand effect. An honor guard wouldn't be bad, and there damn well better be bagpipes (if you forget the bagpipes, your haunting is damn well guaranteed).
Carve my headstone with the following lines:
1. The words my eldest daughter wrote about me at age 13,
"My mother operates by compassion, feeling, and a bit of rock and roll."
2. The words my friend Charlee said about me just last year:
"She's got a heart as big as her boobs."
That about sums it up, don't you think?
I always did love me some good graffiti, so bring spray paint and invite everyone to leave their own messages. Make some of those paint cans secretly full of silly string and egg people into a silly string spray paint battle. Make sure the sprinklers are timed to come on in the middle of all this melee. This is no time for propriety; we've got a death to mark.
After all that kerfuffle has calmed down, off in the distance, everyone should suddenly spot three devastatingly beautiful and mysteriously looking women in tight black dresses, black leather trench coats (collars up, naturally), and gargantuan black lace umbrellas pulled down to hide their faces. Place some dry ice haphazardly around them so they appear to rise from the mist. Put small speakers in the trees so they arrive with their own soundtrack. You probably should hire some fake paparazzi to jump out of the bushes, too, just for vibes. I have no idea how you will pull this off, but I trust you will not disappoint. After all, I can't ever ask for anything ever again.
While everyone is distracted by the commotion, lower my coffin (none of them know my body is long gone, and the damn thing is filled to the brim with peanut M&Ms—it will be our little secret). Quickly (this may take actual magic; have witches on standby), make the gravesite look like nothing had ever happened. Just like camping, leave no trace. Because of all the silly string and spray paint, you'll probably need a team for this. Hire well. When mourners forget the mysterious women and rabid camera-wearing journalists, the apparently untouched landscape will confuse them all. This is the entire point.
Whoosh away real quick with the solid gold urn of my ashes held tightly under your arm. Hop on a private plane (finding one is on you; I can no longer assist with logistics). Scatter my weird bone fragments in Scotland. And Nova Scotia. And from the top of Piestewa Peak. But only begin once you've assembled a choir singing show tunes and a flash mob of dancers performing Defying Gravity from Wicked in each location. Choose your choirs carefully. I will judge which one is the very best. Please don't ask me how I will inform you of my selection, but trust me, you won't miss the message.
Donate my meager estate to a small-town gay youth theater club. Tell them the only thank you I will accept is their ongoing fabulous, over-the-top queerness.
Ongoing fabulous, over-the-top queerness is reward enough for any life.
Haphazardly cobble a mish-mash of my words together into a book to be published exactly one year after my last ash has been set free. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense; in fact, that might be even more on-brand. As long as the very best photo of me you can find is on the cover. And listen, I don't care who you gotta pay, but you'd better be damned sure I hit the NYT bestseller list and stay there until the second anniversary of my passing, at minimum. I'll be watching.
Whatever you make up for a dedication, make sure it makes us both look really good. Or really bad. Just make sure nobody who reads it will ever forget it. I am determined not to be forgotten (shudder, the very thought).
On that note, when people begin to stop talking about me, and none of my carefully placed hashtags are trending, be sure to remind everyone that I was a witch while I lived and that I've been practicing my haunting. Gently suggest that the best way to avoid trouble is to start by erecting a statue in my honor in town squares across the globe and proceed from there.
I know this may seem like a lot, but have fun with it. After all, I'll only get to die this one single time, so why not go out with a bang?
Yours eternally (and I so mean that now)
xo,
jlb.
After I Die, VII
After I die, tell the truth.
Do not speak of me as if I were a saint. I consider my sins some of my very best work. Don't sugarcoat, dial back, or make me sound better than I was. I was a complicated person who lived a complicated life, and my stories reflect that.
Don't you dare stand at a podium and deliver a prettied-up, sanitized, neat, and tidy summation of my days walking this earth? I want it raw, gritty, and not entirely flattering, if that's what it takes to keep it real.
If you only speak of my goodness, you will miss speaking of the whole of me.
It is my wholeness that I guarded with every ounce of fire I possessed in my life, and my god, I will do so in death as well.
My life? It was messy and mundane, extraordinary and glorious. It broke me into shards of aliveness and flung me into life battle-scarred and fierce. I did not move through the world without struggle, and I sure as hell didn't always do it clean.
Consider this your permission to speak of my bad decisions, my missteps, my fuckups, and every last time I stumble-tripped down an unfortunate rabbit hole of my own making. I've got plenty of villains to counter my hero, and I will not have that edited out of my story. I am not a cardboard cutout, one-dimensional side note. I am the main character, and it is the truth of all of it that made me who I am.
Real stories are not easy or tidy, and I lived a real story. Do right by me. Tell it true.
After I Die: VIII
Gather everyone who loves me around my bed.
Light 100 candles and play the music that reminds me of home.
Make contact with every part of my skin that you can reach.
Stay until my energy leaves my body.
Stay until my soul departs the earth.
Speak my name like a spell, like song, like incantation.
Lift your voices and fill my room with sound.
All I know is that, really, I've always wanted to go out singing.
I wrote this exploration of my own death last year, during my hiatus from publishing. It was months before death showed up on my doorstep and carried off someone more dear to me than any of the thousands of words I have at my disposal could ever convey. The months since her passing have caused me to revisit these words repeatedly, although I have, perhaps surprisingly, changed very little. it turns out, in the end, I want to be celebrated, I want to be remembered from a foundation of truth, and I want to go out singing.
And now I want to know about you. When you die, what do you want?
Thank you for being here. As I slowly move back into writing more publically again, your support of this newsletter and these essays is deeply important to me, and means the world.
As I inch my way back onto social media, and this newsletter, I’ve also been devoting myself to my Etsy shop, and giving it the attention it has so long deserved.
I’ve been busy creating new products, mugs, journals, candles, prints, hoodies and more. Right now I’m working on adding digital products like creative workbooks, prompt collections, and writing exercises.
It would mean the world to me if you’d visit and favorite the shop, explore all my creations (❤️ the ones that speak to you), share with your circles, and make a purchase if something calls your name.
When I die I want everyone to be quiet. I want them to listen to the death rattle as my breathing slows and stops. I want them to look at my ashen face, how my mouth gapes open a little as the life leaves my body. Everyone always thinks that looks morbid, and they want to close it. Don’t bother. Leave it hanging open. I am dead, after all. It’s okay. Let me be dead.
When I die I want my brothers to read the psalms over my deathbed. I’m not religious anymore, but this is what we do when people die. We read the psalms. It’s something to do, to spare people the awkwardness of standing around making small talk. The psalms are beautiful, when you take them for what they are and don’t think about the mess of thousands of years of religiosity that surrounds them. Don’t think about that. Just read the words and appreciate their ancient wisdom.
When I die I want to be buried the next day in a simple wooden casket. I want my brothers to say the ancient prayers that we have said over the dead for hundreds of years. Again, I don’t really care about the prayers, but there is so much beauty in the tradition. This is how we care for our dead.
I don’t want everyone to get together for a big meal with my life sized photo on an easel. Just go home. Go home and think about the brevity of life and how you will die soon, just like me. Then go outside and look at the sky and take a breath. Look at the leaves falling around you, dead and decaying. Think about the inevitable march of life towards death. Think about how small you are in the grand scheme of things, how little the world will care when you are dead. Everything will go on, just as it was before.
This might seem sad, or depressing, or morbid. Don’t let it be any of that. Let it be quiet, and peaceful, and still. Let my death make you not just slow down, but stop. Just for a day or two. Then go on living, and forget about me. I don’t mind being forgotten. Everyone forgets the dead leaves that fell from last year’s trees, after all. My body will break down and the worms and bacteria will feed on the decaying matter. Then they will die and other things will feed on them.
My death will make room on the earth for a baby born to parents who will never know of me. That is exactly the way I want it. I had my time. It was beautiful, but it was never going to last forever. That’s okay. I was never meant to last forever.
This prompt has been ruminating in me the past couple of days. As always, you craft and create and inspire with your words in a way that forces me to confront the words within me as well. Thank you for this journey <3
After I Die - Ver.1
After I die, I want to be surrounded by music. I want you to sing Ben Folds to my body. Tell me why you're "The Luckiest." Sing me songs from Moulin Rouge and Def Leppard and Blink 182 and Something Corporate and all the tunes we embedded into our souls when we were falling in love.
When I die, I want my kids to play their favorite songs for me. Yes, bring in the piano and the ukulele and the xylophone and even that damned drum set. Make a stage of my casket and let them shine from atop it so everyone I love can see them the way I see them.
I want you to play my favorite, most irreverent songs for everyone to sit and listen to and not turn away from because they're weird or too metal or too angry. I want speakers everywhere, so even I can feel the bass thumping. Let's make this thing as much the opposite of a church funeral as we can.
Play the music that saved my life in the darkest nights. The music that was my solace when everyone else abandoned me. Play the music that saw me through leaving the church and finding myself and reawakening my sexuality. Play the music that no one else in the room will understand, but maybe, just maybe, it will make them understand me.
Play Breaking Benjamin and Black Veil Brides and I Prevail and Beartooth and the Used and My Chemical Romance and Simple Plan and Something Corporate and Boys Like Girls and Panic! At the Disco and Eminem and Marianas Trench and Linkin Park and Nick Jonas and AFI and Good Charlotte and Lady Gaga and Blink 182 and Faming Hanley and Bullet for my Valentine and Usher and Britney Spears and Disturbed and Within Temptation and N Sync and All That Remains and The Lonely Island and Jason Mraz and Fall Out Boy.
Play my favorite metal songs, and rock covers of Disney songs, and my favorite sultry, sexy songs, and the music that made me want to dance, and the music that kept me sane. Please make sure "I Just Had Sex" by the Lonely Island makes the cut. Because that song cracks me up. Oh, and you can't forget my bad mood buster, "Every Time We Touch" by Electric Callboy. Because I'm sure everyone will need a laugh.
Oh, I know! Let's turn it into a sing-along. Project the words up on the screen while the music plays, so everyone I know is singing "So long and goodnight" at the same time. Or maybe "Sing it from the heart, sing it 'til you're nuts, Sing it out for the ones that'll hate your guts." Can you tell I'm on a MCR kick? That's okay. Their music can be pretty macabre; fitting for this topic, I suppose.
Better idea, let's have a concert. A big ass, whole-day, fucking festival like the ones I loved to go to, even when my body started to protest in my old age. Let's go with multiple stages, and each band plays only the songs that showed up on one of my Spotify playlists or mixed tapes, because yeah, we should probably bring back the nineties for this event. Maybe have a tribute number, where you get all my favorite childhood bands on stage at once and play one epic medley. We're talking NKOTB, Paula Abdul, BSB, N Sync, Green Day, Ace of Base, Aerosmith, Britney, and the Spice Girls.
After I Die - Ver. 2
After I die, I want you to hike to the top of the mountains that cast shadows over my life. Throw my ashes into the frigid air and watch me mingle with your breath as I dance my way down from the highest peaks that stood in the background of all my years.
Mt. Timpanogos in Utah, where we spent so many years trying to escape and be free.
Mt. Si, in Washington, where we raised our babies and found our first chosen family.
Haleakala, in Maui, where we stood and renewed our vows to choose each other.
Mt. Hood, in Oregon, the first mountain of my childhood, and the place we settled when we found our forever home.
After I Die - Ver. 3
After I die, I want you to tell my story. Every single one of you who knew me. Write it down or whisper it or turn it into a rap. Every little thing you remember about me, everything you wish you'd said to my face, every embarrassing and memorable story we ever shared. Gather all those versions of me and turn them into a book. With my gorgeous face plastered to the front, of course.
When I die, I want you to get a tattoo in my honor. Something big, or something small. A flower, a wild strawberry, a dandelion, your favorite quote or better yet, song lyrics. Something you choose or something completely random. Just put some ink on your skin. Because I lived too many years never knowing the joy of painting my body with art and it has become one of my most favorite things.
When I die, I want you to do what makes you happy. For me. Live your best life. Quit your job. Start a business doing the thing you love. Sell your house. Stay where you are. Just do something, knowing I would want you to be living the life of your dreams, and that whatever part of me remains will rejoice in seeing you doing that.