First, if I am comatose for a while pre-death, don't let them call me a fighter.
I'm probably not fighting it.
It's probably the first time I've been able to relax in a decade.

Second, keep my death off the internet.
Tell my friends of my demise with handwritten notes delivered by white-gloved butlers with somber expressions.
Tell my enemies by sitting on their chests and poking them in the forehead repeatedly until they guess how it happened. It shouldn't take long.

Third, my friends from high school will immediately try to design stickers for their car windows with my name on them and a graphic of dance shoes or track shoes or my college mascot.
You are not to allow this.
A sticker denoting the death of a loved one will not keep fellow motorists from noticing that my friends from high school **** at driving.

Not permitted at the funeral:
Gerber daisies
poetry
blue jeans
any ex-boyfriend I refer to by something other than their name (i.e. "the fat hipster I used to hang out with.")

Encouraged at the funeral:
Hugs - everyone must hug
lots of appropriately sad, yet tasteful songs sung by my musically-minded loved ones (may I suggest "In Light of Time" by Phillip E. Silvey?)
And make sure they bury me in the blue dress.

Last, for every story they tell about me where I was kind or selfless or funny or caring,
make sure someone also tells the story where I got too drunk at a frat house and made out with a kid from upstate New York and then spent four hours passed out and/or puking on the floor of the communal bathroom in Ashley's building,
or the one where I punched Savannah in third grade,
or the one where I rolled a car for no particular reason.

Remember me as I was.

Somewhere has my name on it,
            maybe everywhere does.

Like little strips of paper, fortunes from folded cookies.
Master Plan let them go in a gust of Great Plains wind.

I cannot hope to collect every
                                    single
                                                 individual
                              piece                            part
                                                   place                
                                         bit    
                                                     back.
I cannot live unless I try.

"You are such a ******* child."

Nice try, my dear, but you can do better.
See, darling, those words mean nothing.
I am a child. If you asked, I'd tell you.

Can't you do better than that?

Don't you want to crawl under my skin,
set up camp in my head, tent stakes pounded into my brain,
keep me awake at night with a gnaw in my gut?

Try this, instead, love --

"You are a manipulative attention ***** who skips around wielding her emotions like an assault rifle without giving a thought to how that affects anyone around you. You've never had to work for anything, never once in your life, and the minute you do have to try at anything, you will fail. You'll spend the rest of your life looking for someone to take care of you, but you'll never actually let them and you will be alone."*

Isn't that better?

The chill iron nickel copper terror of a car sliding on black sheet ice,
so nearing destruction that ears are already braced for the screech --
it's just that, with gas.

With gas, with intention, my phantom foot presses proverbial pedal to metal,
completely aware of the impending breakage, pain, loss, guilt.

Phantom lips smile and laugh, bitter white,
because he sits in the passenger seat, trust blinding from the wreckage ahead.

I will hurt and be hurt, but phantom limbs feel no pain.