Obituary writers are happy to report that they never get morbid or melancholy when spending so much time writing about death because they don’t write about death, they write about life, the life of the deceased. That’s all well and good for the psyches of the obit writers, but some readers, some curious, some nosy, some anxious readers would like to know more about the reason the obit is appearing in the first place, i.e., someone died.
Don’t bury the lede.* Don’t lead us down the primrose path, dear obit writers. Spare us not the details of someone’s passing, quotidian or heroic, sudden or painfully protracted. Be not afraid of death. It’s your beat. It’s your métier. For 68 years, or 55 years, or 29 years, you wrote not a single word about this person, but you are now. And why? Because he or she or they passed away. That’s the news peg. The inciting incident. That’s the reason you are writing and we are reading--this cherished creature has shuffled off this mortal coil.
Please tell us everything you know. And if you don’t know enough, oh dear obit writer, please find out more. You are a journalist. You have the ways and means. Research is second nature to you and your readers are hungry for particulars. We are fascinated by mortality. And scared to death. We consult gurus and google and still come up empty-handed. Left to our own devices, we travel down dark roads and paint bleak pictures of brutal egress. So, oh me, oh my, obits need more than “Jane Doe died peacefully at home surrounded by her family.”
If the subject of the obit is older than 87, let’s say, then “natural causes” may suffice. For anyone younger, however, it is frustrating to read “after a long illness” or “died unexpectedly” or “lost her battle with cancer” (as if cancer could have been knocked out if the patient had only fought harder or smarter or longer.) We find out more when an athlete tweaks an oblique or ruptures an Achilles tendon: name of doctor, a second opinion, the hospital, length of surgery, recuperation regimen, intimate quotes from teammates and spouses. All this hard news just for the gamblers? And the diehard fans? Aren’t we all gambling on--and fans of--this thing called life?
Sure, be respectful, run it by the family first, but you might be surprised how willing they are to share, how deeply they desire to contribute to the commonweal. We all need to believe there are lessons to be learned from John Doe’s unscheduled exit, revealing perhaps a back street or a bunker in which to hide from the angel of death. We read any GPS, real or imagined.
This is not to suggest you ignore a wonderful life, dear obit writers. Regale us with heart-warming anecdotes and professional peaks and how her mere presence lit up a room or how he raised money for charities and will surely sorely be missed by friends, family, and various communities; but please do not skip over the salient circumstances of his or her or their demise. When death is not part of a front-page murder case, or a high-profile accident, the details of death are largely disregarded. Why? Too macabre? Too invasive? Too much to handle?
Is our last breath our last taboo?
Let’s talk more death talk. Love, schmov--death is the only inevitability we all face. It binds us and guides us even as we try our best to repress and sublimate, even as we watch horror movies and read tragic novels and ride the scariest roller coasters. Or climb mountains with our fingertips and leap from airplanes without pulling the cord. We recite elegies. We dream Stephen King dreams. We visit Aunt Molly at the cemetery even though, or maybe because, no one explained how Molly went, how she suffered or persevered or welcomed the end.
The grim reaper will not be tricked or bought off or prayed away, so we might as well face him/her/they head on. At the start of the 20th century, 85 percent of Americans died at home, in full view of their family. In 2000, that was down to 50 percent. And now hovers around 30 percent, helping death remain remote, relegated to hospitals and hospices, restricted to video games and action movies. All that distance makes it more difficult to work through Kubler-Ross’s first stage of grieving: denial.
Obit writers could tell us the nature of the cancer, the treatment, the diet, sources of pain or pleasure. Recurrence or first wave? Chemo or targeted? Facts matter. This was someone’s life. Someone’s death. If you want to downplay the pure science and emphasize the humanity, scribers of obits, focus on the fortitude or the courage of the fallen, or the struggle or the depression, or how the departed chose assisted suicide over the late stages of Alzheimer’s or ALS. We can handle it. We really can.
I think we can.
If not, there’s always Wordle. Or the Travel Section.
Speaking of travel, thank you for telling us how and where and when Anthony Bourdain killed himself. In upsetting detail. It was shocking but helpful. Rather than filling in the blanks with sordid fantasies and fears, we were presented with a graphic if gruesome picture. We had something to chew on. Bourdain would have approved. He earned such an honest obit because he was always so candid and human and unashamed of any foibles.
Last week, a friend of mine died. We weren’t the closest of friends, but close enough to shake my world and thank my lucky stars. Douglas had called me earlier that day to play tennis. I deferred. He understood. He was a good softball teammate, a good father, husband, artist, community activist, musicologist, and all-around upbeat dude who was endlessly tolerant of fools and slyly accepting of the absurdities of life. I hope he appreciated the big one: while playing tennis that day to maintain his health and extend his life, he collapsed and died.
The funeral service was over-flowing and underwhelming. There were ten speakers. Like the obituaries, the eulogies celebrated his life, his loves, the high points and comic turns. The stories were well-crafted but did not include Doug’s last words, last wishes, last groundstroke. Nothing about his cardio condition or warning signs. Doug didn’t seem dead at all, just late for his own funeral. And he was only 64 years old. No, no one mentioned the Beatles. Nor read from the US Tennis Association handbook: “Playing tennis just three hours per week can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease by 56%. Tennis players add 9.7 years to their life over sedentary individuals.”
Sixty-four is too soon. What happened on that tennis court, in that body, in that moment? Etch a sketch, please. If the details are truly unavailable, we would settle for baseball cards handed out at the entrance of the synagogue with a nice action shot of Doug on the front and vital statistics on the back: date and place of birth, ages of parents’ passing, respective causes of death, family diseases, congenital ailments, rare maladies, or Covid infections. (Baseball cards, it turns out, contain more pertinent statistics than most obituaries or eulogies, although that nice slice of pink bubble gum has been discontinued.)
Sitting shiva, we are tempted to but dare not ask the grieving family about the contents of Douglas’ medicine cabinet. We are curious, not insensitive. These folks are mourning Doug, not Morning Joe. If obit writers did a better job, we wouldn’t be sitting here, munching on rugulah and sipping wine, with questions ricocheting around our brains: Did Douglas have a stroke or a heart attack? Was he taking his medicine? What medicine? How much sleep was he getting? Did he drink red wine or white? How much? When was his last check-up? Was the culprit an embolism? Did he play tennis three times a week for one hour? Singles or doubles? Did he have atrial fib? Did his blood work include a lipid profile? Had he ever been a coal miner? Was he depressed? Did he skip his statins? Did he drink spring water or tap? How much meat did he eat? Was he on Ozempic? Baby aspirins? When did he stop smoking? What was his exercise routine? How much body fat did he shlep around? How was his marriage? How was his business? How was his fantasy baseball team faring? Stop! Stop!
Just stop! Take a breath and entertain the possibility that all the answers to all the questions will provide no clue to your friend’s demise. Death happens. Autopsies are eschewed. Science is mercurial. One mustn’t let grieving devolve into a pharmacological report or allow mourning to transform a full and vibrant life into a questionnaire at the doctor’s office. But how? We know so little about death and spend so much energy being terrified that any sliver of cold truth, any tidbit of information, impactful or not, seems to appease our desire to deal with death and ease the misery of the mystery, or the mystery of the misery.
Douglas is gone. He has crossed the great divide. He has entered the bardo, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, given up the ghost. In the end, the closer we get to death, chronologically and familiarly, the more we want to know about death--especially the death of others.
Can you help us out, oh lovely, lively obituary writers?
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*Journalists use “lede” instead of “lead” so as not to confuse the opening thoughts with the metal called “lead.”
Better that you went to the memorial service and were't there first hand playing tennis that day to know what happened. You might stop playing tenni as a result. We want to remember the dearly departed as they were in life. How/why they died is important to the immediate family, and they know these details. It is not particularly useful to the legacy of the deceased for families to share "what happened" with outsiders in an obituary that they write. Furthermore, people reading about the circumstances of death may ask unwanted questions x however many people are asking, to the surviving family , who then have to rehash and relive these circumstances over and over. No one wants that. It interferes / prolongs the Kubler-Ross "acceptance" part of grieving. Public figures whose deaths are covered as news, more often discuss the circumstances of death a la Bourdain or Notorius RBG, or Natalie Wood, or Len Bias.