Obituaries got me thinking.
I worked for about a decade in my formative teenage years as a small town diner. The experience shaped me in ways I’m still discovering in my thirties and that was in part due to the myriad of people that come and go as employees but also as patrons. Several days ago a gentleman named Bucky, who was a regular in the diner as both a patron and part-time employee peeling and cutting potatoes most specifically for the breakfast crowd needing their home fries, died. And his obituary published today. It was the kind of obituary I want some day; one that captures who I was at my core. This post was written so that many can know about him, but also it’s part of a larger conversation about obituaries, one of the last things left behind.
There was a recent article in the local paper about the wife of a well-known local TV anchor. She recently passed away about a year after her husband. She did not want an obituary. But her children decided to write one because they felt that she didn’t think she was worthy of one, but she was a formidable woman who needed recognition. And they felt they embodied her personality especially when they ended the short obituary with a joke about death, a rabbi, and speaking at a funeral.
Obituaries are treasure troves. I skim them every day and read one that stands out. Several weeks ago it was a dual obituary for a husband and wife. The wife died and the next day her husband died of a “broken heart”. There are the obituaries that you can read between the lines and identify as suicides. There are goofy ones and others that list every accomplishment from birth to death. There are lives cut short and those that lived good, long ones. There are children. There are surprises, inside jokes, and nuggets of truth buried in them.
Just like books do.
I thought about the books that deal with death in a range of ways. Epically Earnest is due out in June 2022 and included the title character creating living obituaries that were interspersed in the story which then reminded me of Miles from Looking for Alaska who was obsessed with collecting the last words of individuals. And of course, Jack’s old neighbor in Dead End in Norvelt who writes the obituaries for the townsfolk for which he must now help. Michelle McNamara didn’t get the last word in her book because she died before she could finish it as she lost herself in research to identify the Golden State Killer in I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Search for the Golden State Killer. Love, Zac: Small-Town Football and the Life and Death of an American Boy couldn’t have been written as detailed as it was if Zac had not kept a diary of his battle with traumatic brain injury due to football before he committed suicide. And the ultimate connection: the well-researched with a side of humor and endearing love– Mo Rocca’s Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving (of which I recommend the audiobook where he narrates).
The topic should not be shied away from nor should the topic of obituaries go undiscussed. Remember the scene in My Girl where Veda’s dad sits at the typewriter to honor the lives of those that come through their doors?
Do others read obituaries? As my grandfather would say, he read them to make sure he wasn’t dead yet. What’s your reason if you do? Curiosity, the artform, respecting the dead? Do you think about what yours will say? Are you actively penning thoughts for your own?
