When I Die, This Is How I Want It To Be by Anneliese Mackintosh, 2014
The magic trick:
Describing a character’s life by imagining her death
A variation on her story “Doctors,” which we highlighted on this site in 2021, “When I Die” purports to be about one thing but really is about another.
Or not another, per se, but about something more.
Specifically, the narrator spends the story telling us about every detail she wants from her funeral. In doing so, though, a picture forms not of her death but of her life.
And that’s quite a trick on Mackintosh’s part.
The selection:
Just before I disappear behind the curtain and – poof – I turn to dust, I’d like Stephen Hawking to give a small speech about the beginning of the universe. I’d like him to demonstrate, in a few short paragraphs, just how insignificant my life has been, in the great scheme of things.
Then I’d like the-woman-who-offered-me-a-bite-of-her-Mars-bar-while-I-was-crying-on-a-train-in-2009 to step forwards and say a few words. I’d like someone to give her a Mars bar.
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