"Death can come at any time." This phrase was offered to me in the book I just finished: The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. An entire chapter was dedicated to the concept of death, a topic that makes almost all of us incredibly uncomfortable. In this chapter I was invited to envision my own death the way that the Bhutanese do - several times daily. Although America lacks the daily reminders of death in our built environment (unless you visit a cemetery, or live in a part of town where cemeteries are abundant), the Bhutanese create pyramids of clay and ashes (tsa tsas) that adorn public spaces ranging from roadsides to window sills. Their culture invites citizens to imagine, envision, and reckon with their own mortality "one to three times daily."
I decided to write my obituary. Perhaps you, too, could benefit from writing your own. Interestingly, I started writing it without any mention of the "work" I do. I realized that the most important parts of me are the essences of who I am, which are the sums of the relationships I have to other living people - not the productivity I generate. Michael Easter commented in his book that encountering death changes our priorities, reframing our interactions and relationships with everyone in our lives - from closest family and friends to complete strangers. I wonder what our world would look like if we all took the time to recognize how close death is. Maybe a prescription for the contemplation of death (one to three times daily as needed) would invite us to reprioritize, simplify, recalibrate.
Olivia Mangat Dhaliwal was something. Elementary school poetry acrostics filled in by her peers reveal that the most frequently chosen adjective for the first letter of her name was “obnoxious”, and occasionally, when other children felt like giving her grace, “outspoken”. She advocated for herself always, and others sometimes. Some mistook her constant noise as anger, but mostly, her loudness came from love - her heart was as big as her voice.
She was known to never do things half-assed, and she struggled to find the middle of anything. Keen on the extremes, she went from eating only charred hot dogs as a toddler to swearing off all meat for six years after learning about the meat industry in high school, and petitioning the district to change the ways they fed students.
Her best days were spent outside exploring or indoors reading. She was blessed to be guided through this life by a shelter pit bull, Baylor, from the streets of Buckhead, Atlanta. This dog was a rescue, who really rescued Olivia after the loss of her father and in the midst of struggling with the pain of anxiety and eating disorders. Together they moved across the country three times, and each weekend they scaled mountains, swam in reservoirs and oceans, and shared adventure snacks - especially apples (Baylor’s favorite).
Olivia wishes to be planted as a tree, and hopes that those surviving her will remember the best days. She is survived by her three siblings, her mom, and Baylor.
