Attending a memorial can make a dying person question who will mourn them

Evidence

Not long after our amazing trip to China, Clifford and I attended a mutual friend’s memorial. During the service, Clifford rested his head on my shoulder and whispered, “I wonder if anyone will be left to throw a memorial for me like this?” — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 260

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The whisper — ‘I wonder if anyone will be left to throw a memorial for me like this’ — is a compact seed for a story about measuring one’s life by who would gather to mourn it.
• SEED: Essay angle on how people facing death measure their lives by the constellation of mourners they anticipate.