Enjoy your flowers, plan a Living Wake.

They will show up after you are gone, but why not invte them while you are here to enjoy it all.

SELF-CARE

Sara E. Stewart

Bouquets of colorful tulips wrapped in paper.
Bouquets of colorful tulips wrapped in paper.

We spend so much time preparing for what happens after someone dies. We plan services, write eulogies, and gather to celebrate a life once that life is already over. But what if we did more of that celebrating while the person is still here to receive it? If you plan it, you can enjoy it too.

That is the idea behind a living wake, sometimes called a living memorial or living funeral. It is a gathering held while someone is still alive, often when they are facing a serious illness or simply want to be present for their own celebration, where family and friends share the same stories, gratitude, and love they might otherwise save for a funeral.

We deserve to get our flowers while we can still smell them. Plan your own wake to do so. Hearing what you meant to someone, while you are still here to hear it, changes the moment entirely. It is not morbid. It is honest. Most of us don't know when we are leaving. What we do know for certain is that we are all transitioning eventually, so there is real value in not waiting.

The same thinking applies to the things we own. So many of us hold onto belongings meant for someone else someday, tucked away in a box, waiting for a day that has no set date. If there is something you want a specific person to have, consider giving it to them now, while you are alive to watch them enjoy it, use it, or simply react to it. You get to see what it means to them instead of only imagining it.

Life is fleeting, and that is exactly why these moments matter. Most of us do not control when we leave our physical bodues, but we can control how present we are while we are here, and how much love, gratitude, and connection we choose to give away before it is too late to see it.