I created my own funeral photo montage — so I know I'll be remembered at my hottest
What was meant to be a low-key night of snacks and laughs took an unexpectedly emotional turn for two best friends.
Instead of their usual catch-up routine, Alexis arrived at Jasmine's home with a laptop and a surprise: a fully edited 24-minute funeral montage of herself, complete with dramatic music, touching tributes, and heartfelt messages.
'I made my funeral montage,' Alexis told People she said as she casually as she connected her computer to the TV. Jasmine was in shock.
'Girl, get this out of my house!' she said.
The moment, captured in a now-viral TikTok video, resonated with thousands online.
'Having a morbid best friend who works in funeral and cemetery services is not for the weak,' Jasmine captioned the video.
Alexis has spent over six years working in the funeral industry, and for her, confronting mortality isn't unusual. She says her Mexican-American background, which embraces death as a natural part of life, influenced her perspective.
'I've always been a little morbid and creepy,' she admits with a laugh.
The idea for the montage stemmed from recent personal events. A motorcycle accident involving Jasmine's cousin left the family scrambling due to a lack of legal or end-of-life plans.
'He's a young man, so he had no will, he had no nothing,' Alexis said. 'That was one of the questions I was asking: does he have anything like a power of attorney? Who's making the decisions here?'
Fortunately, he survived, but the incident made her realize how important it was to plan ahead and inspired her to take control of her own legacy.
Alexis didn't stop at just the video. She's written her will, assigned power of attorney and even designated who will inherit her favorite Star Wars t-shirts.
'I'm really particular, and I don't trust anybody to do things the way that I want to do it,' she said. 'If this happens to me, you make sure I'm right. Don't have me looking all crazy with two different-shaped eyebrows. I got to have my nails done. I want a specific color of flowers.'
Though Jasmine initially reacted with humor and disbelief, the montage soon had both women in tears.
'By pre-planning and getting your affairs in order and even doing stuff like this, you're unburdening your family from having to do this,' Alexis explained. 'I've been in this situation where I've had to put this together at the time of somebody's passing, and you're just miserable.'
Going viral caught them by surprise. Jasmine originally shared it privately on Instagram, thinking it was just another funny moment between friends. But viewers were captivated by the blend of dark humor and genuine love between the two women.
'It just so happened to go viral,' Jasmine said. 'At the time, I wasn't thinking about that. But I was like, let me show all the people that follow me what this dummy's up to today. Because it's always something with her.'
Some commenters expressed concern that Alexis was 'manifesting' her death, but both women dismiss that. 'Planning your funeral is no different from writing a will,' Jasmine said. 'It's not about expecting the worst. It's about being prepared.'
For Alexis, laughter is a key part of her approach to life and death. 'I just want everyone to be miserable without me,' she joked. But she also wants them to smile and laugh, too.
Her perspective has influenced Jasmine as well.
'I used to be super afraid of death. Like, don't even talk about it,' Jasmine admitted. 'But being friends with her, going through my own medical traumas and things, I've learned to cope with it through comedy, laughing, and accepting it. We all know we're going to pay taxes, and we're all going to die. None of us know when.'
Their friendship, built on honesty, laughter and shared experience, has helped both women embrace difficult conversations and find joy in the unexpected.
'Nothing in life is ever that serious,' Alexis said. 'Even death.'
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'So we have senators at the very top of the pyramid; they're from all different corners of the galaxy and represent lots of different cultures. So we had to sort of try and express that through their clothing. Then you have the people that sort of work at the Senate; the more bureaucratic people, the senator's aides, the people who help run the Senate, so they have a very different type of costume as well, nothing quite as grand as the senators, a little bit more like the Star Wars equivalent of an everyday corporate look. Then we had Senate security, so they needed a uniform, and then we also had the journalists and the people from the outside world that have come to report about the things that are happening at the Senate.' Andor isn't the only sci-fi series to feature Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences. 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I mean, everything Calatrava designs looks like it's from the future, so it's sort of inherently going to attract that sort of type of filmmaking and in order to tell those types of stories.'While writing this piece, I learned that a group of Spanish Star Wars fans met up at the City of Arts and Sciences to celebrate May the Fourth in 2005, mere days before the theatrical premiere of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and nearly 20 years before the campus itself would appear in Andor. Knowing that, it feels like nothing short of an act of the Force to see Calatrava's masterpiece finally make its appearance in a galaxy far, far away.
