Channel your inner Vogue and Confidence!
There’s a moment—and if you’re reading this, I hope you haven’t had it yet—when you realize no one’s going to save you. Not your therapist. Not the person you married. Not your kombucha starter or your monthly moon circle or that soft-spoken podcast host who whispers about “being your highest self” over crystal chimes.
It’s the moment after the big rupture. After the betrayal, the loss, the collapse. The moment where the story ends and the after begins—and you’re still there. Alive. Upright. Technically fine. And yet? Not really.
That’s when I started planning my funeral.
And no, it wasn’t because I was suicidal or melodramatic (though I do have a flair for the theatrical—Broadway-trained trauma, darling). It was because I had this sudden, visceral knowing: I wanted the last word.
I wanted my story told the way I lived it—messy, funny, tender, full of contradictions and Joan Didion quotes. I wanted my people gathered not in a beige room with wilted lilies and cold coffee, but somewhere warm and weird and mine. I wanted control—not because I’m a control freak (okay, maybe a little), but because so much of my life had been shaped by things I didn’t choose. This? I could choose.
Also? It gave me something to do.
Let’s talk about how weird we are about death.
In America—land of the free, home of the “thoughts and prayers” industrial complex—we treat death like an improv class we didn’t sign up for. We don’t prepare. We don’t talk about it. We hand it off to funeral directors and floral arrangement professionals and hope no one notices we’re wearing borrowed black.
We love to avoid it. Our Instagram feeds are full of green juices and morning routines and hot girls at funerals looking like Lana Del Rey cover art, but actual grief? Actual loss? Not cute. Not trending.
We spend more time picking outfits for brunch than we do making end-of-life plans. Most people die without a will, let alone a funeral plan. And when someone does plan their own funeral, people look at them like they just said they collect bones or homeschool their cats. It’s morbid. It’s weird. It’s “a little much.”
But you know what’s actually morbid?
Leaving your loved ones to guess what you would’ve wanted while they’re shell-shocked, sleep-deprived, and crying into a sad muffin from a church basement. That’s morbid. That’s cruel.
Planning your funeral isn’t weird. It’s compassionate. It’s generous. It’s the last love letter you’ll ever write.
And let’s be real: it’s also the one party where you’re the guest of honor and can’t be late, cancel, or wear the wrong shoes. Why wouldn’t you want a say?
So yeah, I did it. I filled out the damn funeral workbook. It’s called It’s Your Funeral! which is delightfully upbeat for something that includes questions like “Do you want your organs donated?” and “How do you feel about open caskets?” (Spoiler: I feel deeply opposed.)
The process was bizarrely healing. I made choices. I made jokes. I imagined people I love—people who’ve seen me at my worst and still show up—standing in a circle, sharing stories, laughing, crying, maybe wearing matching sweatshirts that say “URNED IT.”
I imagined someone reading The Velveteen Rabbit (but not the ugly part, because please). I imagined a playlist of road trip songs curated by Ted, Roland, and Beckett. I imagined people writing down memories—little scraps of our shared life—to give to my kids, to their kids, to anyone who wondered who the hell this weird, loving, kind-of-loud woman was.
Was it morbid? Maybe. But it also felt like an act of resistance. Of reclamation. Of being a woman who’s been told to be quiet her whole life and finally saying, “Actually, I’ll take the mic now. Forever.”
Here’s what I knew going in: no overhead lighting. No pastels. No slideshow with Comic Sans. No one crying alone in a hallway because they didn’t know if they were allowed to say I was funny.
I wanted my funeral to feel like me—chic, specific, a little dramatic, but also deeply thoughtful. I wanted white flowers, but not Kentucky Derby white. I wanted professional pajamas, not a suit. I wanted Mark Lunsford officiating because he can keep it together, and Eric Bailey event-planning because he will stop at nothing. I wanted Judy Garland singing “SMILE,” but no child singers. (Who needs that kind of trauma on a Tuesday?)
I wanted my dear friend Anna to deliver the eulogy—with help from Lauren, who will co-write but not speak. (She’ll also design the program, the invite, and possibly a tote bag, because I’m still me, even in death. Merch matters.)
I wanted Jen to read something and tell people she was my sponsor—because that matters. I wanted Diane to pick a reading and Maureen and Carol to stand next to Jen like the Ghosts of Christmas Wisdom.
And I wanted everyone in the room to raise their hand when I asked—through the eulogy—who was left. Who stayed. Like the last Golden Girl.
I wanted to say:
“May you find peace. May you be happy. May you be at ease. I love you all.”
Because I do. Even now.
Let’s talk about ashes.
I don’t want to be in an urn. I don’t want to live forever on a mantel next to a dusty scented candle from 2007 and a Christmas card with “Love & Light” from someone who forgot to use my kids’ names. I don’t want my cremains (yes, that’s what they call them—like a fancy pastry or a crime scene souvenir) to sit awkwardly in a house like an over-polite ghost.
Nope.
If I’m cremated, I want half my ashes to go on a trip—to somewhere I’ve never been. I want my loved ones to take me with them, in a carry-on if they must, and spread me somewhere beautiful and weird. I want there to be laughter. A little crying. Maybe a minor TSA incident. And ideally, no wind.
This is my one serious logistical note: no scattering in a high wind.
Because while poetic, the idea of my ashes drifting peacefully into the ocean becomes much less cute when someone ends up with “Noreen in the mouth.” No thank you. That’s not how I want to be remembered.
The other half? Dealer’s choice. Put me in a conservation burial grove. Recompost me. Resomate me. Launch me in a glitter cannon. Just don’t embalm me, and for the love of all things sacred, don’t let a stranger put me in heels and blush and say I “look peaceful.”
Here’s something no one talks about: death is expensive—and not just in a soul-crushing, emotionally destabilizing kind of way.
I’m talking cash. Funeral homes, caskets, burial plots, “viewing” rooms with overhead lighting that could make Cate Blanchett look sallow—it’s all a racket.
The average funeral in the U.S. costs over $9,000. That’s more than I’ve spent on therapy in two years. (Just kidding. But barely.)
And it’s not just money—it’s the emotional cost of having to make decisions you were never prepped for, while sleep-deprived and grief-blind. It’s the well-meaning “help” from someone who thinks your dead loved one would have loved the Enya cover of “My Heart Will Go On.” It’s the upselling of grief. The spiritual Etsyfication of mourning.
You walk in wanting to honor someone. You walk out with an invoice, a small box, and the creeping suspicion that capitalism doesn’t even let you die without taking a cut.
That’s part of why I planned all of this. Not because I want control for control’s sake—but because I don’t want my kids making high-pressure decisions about things like casket lining and urn personalization while trying to remember if I liked lilies or loathed them.
(I loathed them. They smell like depression and divorce. You’re welcome.)
We’ve turned grief into a performance art.
There’s a script for it: First, shock. Then the “I’m okay” phase. Then maybe a sexy breakdown, followed by redemption and renewed purpose. Hollywood loves this arc. So does Instagram. So does your one friend who can’t stop telling you about the time she “moved through her grief” with interpretive dance and gluten-free muffins.
But real grief? It’s weird. It’s petty. It’s ugly-crying into a CVS bag and getting irrationally mad that someone misspelled your name in the condolence card. It’s realizing no one else knows that you always put your coffee mug on the left side of the desk—and no one ever will again. It’s absence with a megaphone.
And it doesn’t move in stages. It does the cha-cha. It backslides. It tap dances on your throat in the middle of a Tuesday morning Zoom call.
The funeral isn’t closure. It’s company. It’s a collective sigh, a weird party, a moment where you all stand around the crater someone left behind and say, “They were here. And that mattered.”
That’s what I want my funeral to be. Not a wrap-up. A relay. Not a full stop. A soft comma.
I am, to be clear, obsessed with grief merch. I want there to be sweatshirts. Not cheap ones. Not stiff cotton with a janky heat-press design. I want good merch. Mitzvah-quality. Glossier-soft. A tiny bit smug.
Tote bags are also in the running. Maybe enamel pins. Something you can wear and have someone ask about, and you say, “Oh this? It’s from Noreen’s funeral,” and the person you’re talking to says “Wait, that Noreen?” and you both laugh and cry and share a story.
Legacy isn’t just about who remembers you. It’s about how they remember you. And if they remember you with a playlist, a soft hoodie, and a story about how you once laughed so hard in a CVS you peed a little? Good.
Perfect, actually.
Let me tell you something that still catches in my throat when I say it out loud:
There was a time—not long ago—when I realized I could die, and no one would really know who I was.
They’d know about me.
They’d know what I did for work.
They’d know I had kids. That I liked good lighting and better jokes. That I was “strong,” whatever the hell that means.
But they wouldn’t know what songs made my chest ache.
They wouldn’t know the inside jokes I never told out loud.
They wouldn’t know the way my mind stitched humor and heartbreak into the same breath, or that I kept lip balm in every drawer like a tiny, hydrating talisman.
They would eulogize the version of me they had access to. Not the whole, weird, luminous mess of me.
And that gutted me more than death ever could.
You know what people say when they don’t know what to say?
“You’re so brave.”
It’s the most backhanded bouquet of a compliment.
Translation: “You seem like you’re doing okay, and I’d really like this conversation to end now.”
I’ve been called brave for getting out of bed.
For showing up to work.
For telling the truth.
For surviving sexual violence.
For laughing after betrayal.
For crying in public and not apologizing.
But you know what bravery actually feels like?
Like exhaustion. Like shaking. Like your teeth are too big for your mouth and your body is one inch from shutting down.
It doesn’t feel noble. It feels necessary.
The people we call brave are often the people who had no f*cking choice.
We crown the survivors and ignore the systems that forced them to survive.
Here’s the truth I didn’t want to write but will, because that’s the deal I made with myself when I started this chapter: I planned my funeral not because I’m afraid of dying—but because I know what it feels like to disappear while alive.
To be performatively fine.
To shrink into roles.
To wear “resilient” like a trench coat with a rip in the lining.
To smile through rot.
There is a kind of grief that comes when the world sees the version of you that works for them—and not the truth of who you are.
There is grief in invisibility.
In being needed, but not known.
In holding everything together so well that no one realizes you’re breaking.
Planning my funeral became a way of refusing to be erased.
Of saying: I was here. I mattered. This is how I want to be remembered.
I have nothing against healing, in theory.
I love a good therapy worksheet. I’ve journaled. I’ve meditated. I’ve whispered “I’m safe” to myself in Target.
But healing is also an industry now. A capital-H Healing™ enterprise that tells us grief has five stages and you should be on stage three by now, please, because you’re making the rest of us uncomfortable.
We’re told that healing is the goal. That if we just yoga harder, gratitude journal deeper, and cut toxic people out faster, we’ll arrive at this enlightened version of ourselves who no longer flinches when someone says, “You’re just like your mom.”
But healing isn’t a straight line. It’s a Möbius strip made of salt and glitter and other people’s projections.
Sometimes healing is standing in the cereal aisle crying because you realized you never said thank you to the person who taught you how to parallel park.
Sometimes it’s saying “no” and not explaining why.
Sometimes it’s planning your funeral because it’s the only thing you can control.
This is what no one tells you:
You can survive everything—the betrayal, the gaslighting, the silent car rides, the fear, the shame, the ache of being looked at and still not seen—and still not know how to live.
You can survive so well that people stop checking on you.
And one day, you look around and think: “This is it? This is what I clawed my way back for?”
So you start again. With whatever scraps of self you have left. You make a playlist. You tell the truth. You rot in a hotel room and order DoorDash and cry-laugh through old episodes of 30 Rock. You write the kind of eulogy you wish someone had given you while you were still alive.
And then you don’t die.
You live.
You live, and it’s not neat, and it’s not polished, and sometimes it’s just you and a pack of gum in the bottom of your purse trying to remember what it felt like to want something.
But it’s yours.
And that’s enough.
Let’s talk about legacy—not in the Oprah-Winfrey-voice-over-an-inspirational-montage kind of way. I’m not here to be remembered as “the strong one” or “the brave one” or “that woman who really held it together.” (I didn’t, thank you very much. I had glue sticks stronger than I was at certain points.)
I want to be remembered in specificity.
I want to be remembered as the woman who brought five kinds of snacks to any group activity, just in case someone else was pretending they weren’t hungry. The woman who sent voice memos instead of texts because feelings have tone. The woman who always packed too many bandaids and never enough chill.
I want my kids to remember that I laughed loudly in inappropriate places. That I loved books, naps, and a really good pair of pants. That I once took them to school drop-off in a “Don’t Tell Me to Smile” hoodie and accidentally traumatized a second-grade teacher.
I want them to remember that I chose joy—not because it was easy or cute, but because I had to claw it out of grief with my bare, manicured hands.
Look, I could’ve written 5 Habits of Highly Resilient Women With Abs. I could’ve posted reels about trauma-informed skincare and booked a book tour sponsored by oat milk. But I didn’t want to monetize my meltdown. I wanted to honor it.
This funeral plan? It’s a love story. Not a self-help saga.
It’s not about self-optimization. It’s not about “becoming my best self.” It’s about building a soft, honest landing strip for the people I love.
When my kids are grown, and I’m gone, and they’re staring at the weird silence where I used to be—I want them to have something to hold.
Not just a laminated will and a login list. But stories. Laughter. Music. A prayer card that says “She was never boring.”
I want them to know that even when I was dying—slowly, in pieces, over the years—I still showed up. Still made playlists. Still cared deeply about fonts and tote bags.
Because I believe the small things are holy.
Grief doesn’t need grandeur. It needs anchors. Little things that tether you to the person who’s gone, so they don’t feel quite so gone.
That’s why I wrote in every detail. The music. The flowers. The friends I want to speak. The people I don’t. The fact that the theme should absolutely be a pun, because if we can’t laugh while we mourn, then what was the point?
(Working list still includes: Resting Stitch Face, Gone Girlboss, and Glow Girl Glow. Open to revisions.)
That’s why I want sweatshirts. Good ones. Mitzvah-level. Soft like a hug, snarky like a tweet, emotionally resonant like a Taylor Swift bridge.
I want people to wear them later. At the airport. On a sad Tuesday. And feel like they’re still carrying me, in the ways that matter.
We love the idea of closure. As if grief is a messy file we can sort, label, and store under “Handled.”
But I don’t want closure. I want connection. I want a long, beautiful, sometimes ugly tether that says: “We loved each other. It mattered. We made meaning out of pain. And we’re still here.”
I don’t want my people to “move on.” I want them to move with. To carry me, lightly. To let me live in the stories they tell, the snacks they pack, the moments they catch themselves laughing when they thought they couldn’t.
This funeral plan isn’t a finale. It’s a favor. A map. A gift.
And it says:
This was my life.
These were my people.
Here’s how I want to be remembered—loudly, tenderly, fully.
If they’re reading this someday—after the flowers have wilted and the casseroles have stopped and someone has finally cleaned out my junk drawer (good luck)—this is what I want them to know:
You were the best part.
The very best. Everything else was noise. You were the song.
I didn’t write this funeral plan because I was giving up. I wrote it because I was still loving you, even from far away. I wrote it because I wanted to wrap my arms around you one last time, even if only through playlists and prayer cards and tote bags that say “Ashes to Ashes, Sass to Sass.”
I hope you carry me in your pockets. In your playlists. In the way you make people feel welcome.
I hope you know that loving you was not the thing I survived. It was the thing that saved me.
There’s a weird thing that happens when you tell someone you’ve planned your own funeral. They do this little head tilt. A soft wince. Like you’ve just confessed you knit sweaters for your taxidermy collection.
Then they say something like, “Oh… wow. That’s… good for you,” while backing away slowly like you might be contagious with Sadness.
Here’s the thing they don’t get:
I’ve never felt more alive than when I started writing my own ending.
I laughed. A lot. I cried too, but the kind that sneaks up on you—soft, not showy. The kind of crying that says: “This mattered.” That says: “I’m still here, and I’m making meaning of it, dammit.”
Because what’s the alternative?
Leave it all blank? Hope someone else writes the ending I wanted but was too polite to claim?
Absolutely not. If I have to go out, I’m going out like me: crying-laughing, holding space, and reminding everyone that grief can still wear red lipstick and crack a joke about cremains logistics.
Laughter and grief are not opposites. They’re twin siblings born from the same human truth: we love, and we lose. We hope, and we hurt. We want more time, and we also want to rest.
We joke about death—not because we don’t feel it, but because we do, and the body needs somewhere for the overflow to go.
It’s why we joke at wakes. It’s why gallows humor exists. It’s why, when someone says “she died doing what she loved” (e.g., eating fried pickles on a chaise lounge), we smile even through the sting.
I want people to laugh at my funeral. Not in spite of the sadness. With it.
I want someone to get the giggles during a reading. I want people to snort-laugh during the playlist. I want someone to tell an entirely inappropriate story and for everyone to say, “Yep. That tracks.”
Because laughter doesn’t erase grief. It honors it. It says, “I loved you enough to miss you and remember the uninformed stuff.”
We curate weddings. We curate birthdays. Hell, we curate brunch.
But death? We leave it up to strangers in shoes that squeak.
Here’s my hot take: death deserves better lighting.
It deserves intention. Meaning. A vibe. (Yes, I said vibe.)
It deserves the same artistry we bring to our most alive moments. Not because death needs to be Instagrammable, but because it is sacred—and sacred doesn’t mean somber. It means thoughtful.
This is why I planned it all. Because when I go, I don’t want default settings. I want deliberate ones. I want a space that says: this person loved fiercely, felt deeply, and didn’t let the culture of silence dictate the way she left.
I want people to feel held. I want the flowers to be white, but not white like a dentist’s office. White like “clean slate,” white like “pause,” white like “she really did try to make everything beautiful, even the hard parts.”
When I started this chapter, I thought it was about dying. But it’s not. It’s about claiming space while I still can.
It’s about saying:
I don’t want to be remembered as a cautionary tale, or a martyr, or a woman who “stayed strong.” I want to be remembered as someone who felt everything and still showed up. Who made art out of ache. Who didn’t wait for permission to tell the truth.
I’m not done living. I’m not even done molting.
But planning my funeral gave me back a piece of my life. It reminded me that I get to choose how I’m seen. That I get to say “this is what mattered,” even if it’s a playlist, a pun, or a memory card that says “You made me laugh when I didn’t want to.”
If you’re still here, still reading this long, rambling, love letter to mortality—thank you. You’re part of my witness circle now. You’re someone I wrote this for.
Maybe you’ve been through something too. Maybe you’ve lost someone and wanted to scream at the beige-ness of it all. Maybe you’ve felt invisible in your own life and wondered what it would take to be seen, fully, finally.
This is your permission slip: Plan your ending. Curate your goodbye. Make it weird, and wonderful, and so deeply you that no one will ever forget it.
Don’t do it because you’re dying.
Do it because you’re alive—and you deserve a say in the narrative.
Here’s something I never thought I’d say: planning my own funeral made me less afraid of dying.
Not because I suddenly believe I’ll float off into some celestial brunch or be reincarnated as a well-rested housecat (though, fingers crossed). But because for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’ve left the door open just enough for people to find me after I go.
They’ll know where I stood. What I loved. Who mattered. What mattered.
They’ll know I didn’t wait to be remembered—I wrote it down, made it weird, passed out sweatshirts, and made sure the music slapped.
If you’ve made it this far, you deserve the full funeral fantasy:
The death positive movement doesn’t mean we’re excited to die. It means we’re not pretending it won’t happen. It’s about honesty. Preparation. Reverence. Humor. Letting death be what it always was: human.
It pushes back on the sterilized, shame-filled, capitalism-soaked way we’re taught to approach death. It says: you can die well—not just medically, but meaningfully.
It says:
You just need to be real. And you need people around you who are willing to hold that reality with tenderness and truth.
You know what this all is, really?
It’s a quiet revolution.
Planning your death, writing your ending, saying what you want—it’s radical. Especially for women. Especially for mothers. Especially for people whose needs were always second, third, or swallowed whole.
It’s an act of resistance to say:
I will not go gently into a beige-lit room with terrible music.
I will not be remembered by default.
I will leave the people I love with clarity, comfort, and probably a hoodie.
This isn’t about control. It’s about care.
It’s about refusing to disappear.
It’s about choosing to be known, even if it makes people uncomfortable.
It is.
But so was being alive. So was staying. So was holding your pain while helping your kids with math homework. So was telling the truth in rooms that preferred silence. So was becoming someone you could be proud of, even when no one else clapped.
Too much is what I do best.
If this chapter did anything, I hope it cracked something open in you. Not just a fear. Maybe a wish. A curiosity. A seed of your own goodbye, whispered into the present.
Write it down. Share it. Make it weird.
And if you’re there when it happens—when I go—remember this:
Raise your hand if you’re still here.
Play the playlist. Tell the story. Wear the sweatshirt.
And know that I loved you. Even now.
Noreen
The Fashion and Style enthusiast with a flair for drama and entertainment! A millennial on the lookout for the trending styles inspired by and believes in: “You can get anything in life if you have the right dress for it!” Adding a little magic through the power of words and not holding back on fashion and styling opinions! Let’s connect to stay on top of trend alerts and the who is who of Fashion world and get inspired to give your personality the styling oomph you’ve been craving for! Nageen Abbas at Vogue Vocal is the brains behind our Woke Vogue and Lifestyle Library!
