Dare to lower your nets into ‘deep water’

She began the practice when she was only twelve. Her mother was required to do it as part of her training to volunteer at the local hospice. An aspiring writer, her daughter decided to take up the challenge and has continued the practice now that she is a mother herself: Every year she writes her own obituary.

She follows the format of her mother’s assignment: the facts, including age and home; survivors; achievements in work or school; and finally, community, or how people might remember her.

The “obituary writer,” Kelly McMasters, says that writing your own obituary “is not as maudlin as it might seem. If you take a few minutes to try it, you might find the same. In about a page or so, I usually end up with a gentle accounting of the year, held against all the past ones. I found many of the accomplishments that felt precious one year were hardly worth a mention the next.

“Some years are short and perfunctory; some swell with joy and hope, pride even.  There is a comfort in the accumulation, like the stacking of blocks — daughter, wife, mother of one, mother of two. And owning up to the unstacking, too, such as divorces, difficult moves, disruptions and the deaths of others in your life.”

There have been a few years when McMasters struggled to write her obituary, such as the year she became a single parent in the wake of her divorce and the year of 9/11 — she was at the World Trade Centre the day of the attacks. She could not write at all during the COVID years. But most years, the exercise brought McMasters a degree of comfort.

“When I flip through my old obituaries, I am flipping through past versions of myself. In many ways, they are as good as dead, unreachable former selves, and I find solace in being able to say hello.

“It seems dreadfully unfair that we wait until after our deaths to write them and never get to read them ourselves. Writing your obituary while you’re still alive can offer clarity about your life and, mercifully, if you find something lacking, you still have time to revise.”

Kelly McMasters’ annual “obituary” chronicles her journey through life’s “deep waters”: when she dared to venture beyond the safety of the shallows to cast her net into the turbulent, unknown “depths” of divorce, single-parenthood, illness, death — and discovered within herself the resources to sail on. Jesus challenges us to put aside our own discouragement and doubts and dare to lower our nets into the “deep water” of Gospel justice and reconciliation. As Kelly McMasters’ annual “obituaries” attest, God is with us when we embark into the depths in search of a worthwhile catch: love and compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation, justice and peace. Confident of God’s grace and wisdom, we can transform our own Gennesarets by setting our small boats and fishing nets — despite the long night already — to the work of bringing in the “catch” of God’s forgiveness and peace.