Read the article before you do anything else. It explains how today's challenge isn't really as morbid as it sounds. What better way to understand that your life is finite and that you need to get off your duff and live it than writing your own eulogy? Facing your mortality will give you greater cause to live each day with purpose.
In fact, writing my own eulogy gave me almost too much perspective. Knowing that life is fleeting and temporary made me wonder about all those hours I've been spending at the gym. Surely I could be out in the fresh air or sampling the finest wines and foods instead of breathing recirculated air, grunting and sweating. One of the reasons I've never managed to stick with any exercise regimen is that I always get the creeping sense that I'm wasting my time. The two hours I spend lifting weights and jogging on a treadmill could be used in so many more constructive ways: writing short stories, planning novel plot lines, researching historical epochs, learning Korean, exploring Seoul, etc, etc. I always get the feeling that I'm using up an insane amount of my precious lifespan doing something that's of no material benefit.
Not true, of course. Working out is healthy. And I don't mean to insinuate that I actually would use those extra two hours constructively if I stopped going to the gym. But hey, I never said my mind was logical. I just said that I found it hard to stick with exercise plans because my mind started working against me.
Anyway. Here's my eulogy:
Andrew Post was a wanderer from the beginning. He was born in 1986 in Auburn, California, but didn't stay there very long. He called many places home during his youth: southern Ohio, rural Tennessee, urban Virginia, the California desert, the plains of Wyoming. As a small boy he kept his nose glued to the airplane windows, looking at the big world going by beneath him and vowing that he would see it all someday.
It was this same intrepidity which drew him to North Dakota State University, far from his home in Southern California. (That, and the lack of an admission deadline.) He felt that a career in zoology was his ticket to travel and adventure. After a bad run-in with advanced chemistry, however, he switched his major to communication, graduating in 2007 with a degree in journalism and broadcasting and an English minor. If he couldn't study the big wide world of mountains, trees, animals and people, he figured he would write about it instead.
A nationwide job market slump forced Andrew to seek his fortunes abroad. He spent four nonconsecutive years as an expatriate English teacher in South Korea, two as a professor at Sejong University in Seoul. During this time, he became an avid blogger, sold travel articles to online magazines and wrote several historical and science fiction novels. Despite his journalistic pursuits, it had always been Andrew's intention to be a writer. His debut novel Revival won him fame and fortune when it was published in 2016. He'd sent one of the first drafts to me a few months earlier. I remember critiquing it harshly and telling him flat-out that it was crap. "Thanks," he said. "Now I know I need to do better." And he did. He told me afterward that the greatest accomplishment of his life, besides finding a woman who was willing to reproduce with him, was winning the Nebula Award for Best Novel that same year.
In August of 2013, Andrew proposed to his long-time girlfriend at Tokyo Disneyland. He would always say, "It was the smartest thing I ever did, asking that woman to marry me." The two wed upon their return from South Korea in 2015 and had three beautiful children, Zebulon, Aurora and Gilbert. Though Andrew was often far from home on one globetrotting adventure or another, he always made sure to be there for his children, for birthdays and Christmases, triumphs and tragedies. He raised his kids to be independent, forthright and principled people who pursued their dreams without fear or compunction.
Anyone who met Andrew knew that his list of hobbies and interests was a long one. He was an energetic auto-didact and read whatever he could find about history, astronomy, technology, and the natural sciences. On the fiction front, he adored adventure tales, notably science fiction but occasionally dipping into fantasy and mainstream fiction as well. He loved aviation, becoming a pilot at the age of 24 and flying throughout his life. He took a great interest in classic and vintage cocktails, mixing and sampling as many as he could and even inventing a few of his own. The cocktail bar he ran out of his first apartment in South Korea was legendary among the expatriate community. Shooting was another hobby of his, and whenever he was able he'd get a group of friends together and head to the range. He was happiest after a long day of trapshooting, off-roading, flying, or hiking, sitting in a comfortable chair within view of a good sunset, a glass of Scotch in his hand and a lit pipe between his teeth. His greatest love, however, was travel. There were very few countries that Andrew didn't want to see, and he spent a lifetime traveling all over the world and writing about it in his journals. He sent me many postcards and pictures from the road. The best of these was the one I got in the winter of 2023. It was a photo of Andy standing in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary on San Cristóbal Hill in Santiago, Chile. He'd scrawled a message to me on the back: "This town is great! I might just retire here." In his lifetime he set foot on all seven continents and explored over sixty countries. He told me once that if there was a single place on his bucket list that he missed, he'd die a regretful man. I think he managed to avoid that unpleasant scenario. He and his wife retired to Santiago in 2046, just before Andy's 60th birthday. He opened a bar and spent the last two decades of his life plying thirsty Chileans and expatriates with delicious drinks and regaling them with tales of his life.
Andrew, or Andy as his friends called him, was a rare soul: a fellow who went against the grain, but didn't hold it against you if you didn't follow. He thrived in adversity, worked hard under pressure and always put a cheerful face on things. He could lighten any awkward situation with a lame but well-timed pun. He was intensely loyal to his friends and would never speak ill about one of them behind their backs. He did his level best at work and maintained a professional and industrious demeanor while on the job. His employers and friends alike could rely on him to go the extra mile. He always had an interesting tidbit to share about any given topic, and had away of explaining things that made them interesting and worthwhile. He would never pass a bum on the street without flipping him a quarter. He often failed to live up to his own standards, but he never quit trying.
I will miss Andy's intolerable puns. I'll miss his goofy grin. I'll miss his impeccable taste in movies, whiskey, and cigars. I'll miss flying with him over the Mojave Desert and the Alaskan wilderness. I'll miss his mouth-watering vegetarian lasagna. I'll miss his kindness, his optimism and his endless cheer. I'll miss the Santa Claus beard he grew in his old age, and the free gin and pipe tobacco he'd ply me with whenever I visited him in Chile. I'll miss the roaring adventures he wrote about in his novels, and the adventures the two of us had together. I'll miss the sight of him climbing, grinning, out of his trusty Jeep after a particularly challenging hill or patch of mud. But most of all I'll miss his imagination. Nothing was impossible for Andy; he dreamed big and he never lost sight of his goals. He'd always see the funny or wacky side to any situation. With his passing, the world has become a bit darker. But I know that we've all learned a little something from his novelist's mind, his punster's mouth and his go-getter style. Wherever he wanders now, I wish him all the best.
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