Obituaries

In our younger days we hardly ever looked at the obituary page in our local newspaper. There would have been no need, as our closeknit community's grapevine was exceedingly efficient, and the death of someone we knew would have been known before any notice appeared in the paper.

That remains as true, or even truer, today, with the Internet now linking so many of our friends. But for some years now I have been checking the daily paper's death notices. Partly this is due to an innate curiosity, a shade morbid perhaps, about how our fellow citizens departed this life, what they did during it, and how those they left behind will remember them. Another part of it may be a desire to prepare oneself for the inevitable, while one is still able.

Grim as that may sound, I know that my father, who passed away from a dread disease at the young age of 42, himself prepared his death notice for the newspaper not long before he died. I thought at the time that that showed his profound courage. And I hope that before my time comes, I shall be able to draw on his example.

For now, I am happy to be able just to read the biographies in the Obituary section of our daily paper.

I see that the death notices are much longer today than they used to be. My cynical nature tells me that may have something to do with the sad economic state of the print media and the fall-off in paid newspaper advertising. But the obits are definitely wordier nowadays.

It is sadder to read that someone passed away "after a long (or brave, or heroic) battle (or struggle)" with this or that disease. It is less sad to read that someone died peacefully at a ripe old age surrounded by family members.

We may read that this person, if older, is survived by a loving spouse, children, and perhaps grand- and great-grandchildren. Sometimes all are named, and even the names of their spouses may be included in the notice in parentheses. We may share in the survivors' sense of loss, wish them well, and then proceed to read about how the deceased lived his or her life (place and date of birth, education, achievements in sports, marriage/s, family connections, military service, jobs held or careers embarked upon and succeeded in, hobbies, church activities, volunteer work, support for the arts, places visited in the world.) Words such as "dear", "loyal", "cherished", "adored", "tireless", "generous", "humor", "sorely missed", "honored", "greatest joy", "passion" (for sports or hobbies), these may be expected to appear with regularity.

(I can fully appreciate how very difficult it is for any writer to come up with words to assuage the sense of loss over the death of a loved one, and the previous paragraph is not intended to be disparaging.)

More often than not, a photograph of the deceased accompanies the death notice. Usually they depict the person in the prime of life, and in some cases, even in early youth. This gives the notice a distinct incongruity, as when the photo of an attractive young woman in her early thirties is paired with an obituary for her ninety-year-old self.

The last part of the notice will announce the time and place of a memorial service, generally in a place of worhip or the chapel of a funeral home, and where donations to a charity can be made in memory of the deceased.