Shannon Phillips

So sometimes, when you can’t sleep, you lie awake thinking about what you want on your epitaph. Right? It’s not just me?

Maybe it’s just me. Anyway, for a long time the top contender has been:

Shannon Phillips
1976-20??
She Ate Well

Because seriously I think that says a lot about how rich my life has been and how filled with happiness: like, if you think about it, we middle-class Americans live in the kind of luxury that Julius Caesar could only envy. Maybe he had a feast of peeled grapes and lark’s tongues, every once in a while? Dude, I eat bananas and coffee for breakfast. I can have grapes whenever I want. I can also have French cheeses and Swiss chocolate and Dungeness crab from the San Francisco Bay. Plus, I have indoor plumbing—well, not right now, but usually.

My life would make Julius Caesar weep with envy.

Sometimes, though, when I’ve had a hard day, I think maybe it should be something more like:

Shannon Phillips
1976-20??
She Did All Right

or maybe

Shannon Phillips
1976-20??
Could Have Been Worse

But honestly, for the record, I don’t care what happens after I die. I want my body parts to be donated anywhere they might do good, and I want my loved ones to ritualize my death in whatever fashion gives them the most comfort. And I don’t want them to spend a lot of money on it. Cremation sounds good. Maybe scatter my ashes somewhere and plant a tree, that would be nice.

Here, I guess, secretly, is the nicest memorial I can think of:

Jo Shannon Phillips
1976-2399
Greatly loving and much loved
She lived deep and died old