Prompt 295-Eulogy 2

Write your own eulogy.

Ali stood in front of a small crowd of people in a wooded clearing that was just large enough to accommodate everyone. Though her heart ached for their loss, she allowed herself a small smile at the beauty of that place. It was exactly the kind of place Sara would have loved to be buried. There was a reason so many of her settings included forests and mountains and lakes. None of the people gathered here would feel out of place.

She looked out over the group and found her family huddled tightly together, nodding encouragement as she prepared to deliver the words she had struggled to compose. Sayuri, Mika, Yuri and Yuki and Nikkie. There were many familiar faces, people she had known for years. Kita and Leo, and their crew of pirate and ninja misfits. Lara and Shane and Midge. The Price brothers, Todd and Jack, and their odd assortment of friends. The twins, Lydia and Luka, and their village. And many more who were new to her whose names she did not know.

Everyone waited expectantly for her to start. Odd that she should be so nervous to speak when she had faced gods and monsters and lived to tell of it. Ali blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. Sara had always seen her through those battles, but she was no longer here to guide her through the hardest battle of all. How do you say goodbye to your creator?

“Good afternoon everyone,” she began timidly. Sayuri gave her another encouraging nod. She clutched the fire opal hanging at her neck. How she wished Hiei were there at her side. But Hiei was not Sara’s, and could not mourn her as the rest. “Thank you all for coming out to remember a woman who means so much to each of us.

“For anyone who does not know me, my name is Ali Shinamori. I was—am—Sara’s oldest creation. I was her first real experiment at making an original character. Everything she learned from creating me, fleshing me out, she applied in giving life to all of you. In many ways, you are all my children as much as hers, and that is why I was chosen to speak for her today.”

Ali’s heart pounded in her ears. She took a deep, calming breath. “The truth is, Sara was the one with the words. She brought every last one of us to life with her words and so none of us would exist without her. To us, she was a god.

For many people, gods can’t die. But we are all characters of fiction and we know the truth to be the opposite. Many of us have been gods, have fought gods, have been killed by gods and killed gods. While it hurts to say goodbye to Sara, we understand that even gods can die.

“She wasn’t perfect. Many of us suffered because of the lives she wrote us. Some of us were left behind, forgotten or deemed uninteresting or inadequate. But even those, she loved. It pained her to not have found a use or story for those. She always believed she would find the right world for even the forgotten characters. The one thing she lacked was time.”

People nodded solemnly. Ali saw shadowy characters older than herself who had been born while Sara was still a child, given names and brief settings but never fully breathed into life as Ali and the rest. They knew their stories had sparked Sara’s creative fires and if Ali was the only one who remembered them now, they were ok with that.

“Time comes for every human, and though she was a god to us she was also a human being. Time is nothing for us. We will live on so long as there are still people who will remember her, who will read our stories even though she is gone. That we are even gathered here like this means there are people who remember her, and so remember us.

“They say no one is ever truly dead until the last person who remembers you is gone.” Ali closed her eyes and placed her hands over her heart. “Sara lives on through us. Let’s continue to make her proud.” She opened her eyes and saw dozens of tear-filled faces nodding and cheering. She turned her own face up towards the sky. The sunlight filtering through the trees warmed her cheeks even as he tears streamed down. Sara would always be proud of them.

Notes: Sorry for the day late post. Thursday was my husband’s birthday and he had golf after work so we didn’t get to celebrate until last night. I slept like garbage on Thursday night too so after a nice dinner out last night and some quality gaming time together, I fell asleep pretty early. I also wasn’t in the right headspace to write my own eulogy. I have enough morbidly intrusive thoughts without thinking about how people would remember me after I’m gone.

That said, I really struggled to write about myself for this. I found it akin to writing my resume. I know I need to work harder on being kinder to myself and thinking of myself as a real functioning person and stop the negative self-reflections I’m prone to, but this prompt pushed all those buttons for me. I decided I would just write a eulogy for one of my characters instead. There was an earlier prompt that I wrote Ali’s thoughts on how her family might remember her without writing an actual eulogy but then I thought “hey what if Ali gave me eulogy instead?” So that’s what happened here. It’s nice to think my characters will live on after I’m gone and perhaps even think of me fondly.

So that does it for this week. Tomorrow I will have the final list of prompts from this book and an announcement as to the future state of the blog given that we’re down to the last 5 prompts of my book. I look forward to talking to you then! Have a great rest of your weekend!

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