I will soon have lived four score and four years. I only started reading the obituaries about five years ago. Friends much my junior have been reading them for years. I suppose I felt it was time for me to learn something about what people who were dead had thought about themselves when they were not dead (if the deceased wrote the obituary beforehand – not uncommon) or what relatives (having composed it post mortem) were thinking about the deceased while he or she was still among the living.
However, if you want an in-depth profile of anyone, an obituary is not the place to look. I say that sympathetically. Decency dictates that this is not the time for being critical but also, practically speaking, it’s best to let bygones be bygones since nothing can come of it anyway now that the curtain has fallen on the final act. No one is as perfect as they’re portrayed in an obituary or a eulogy. On the other hand, no one can, in just a few paragraphs sketch the complexities of an entire lifetime.
I’ve wondered about obituaries. The other day, when I decided I would write my own, my mixed feelings surprised me.
However, instead of my obituary, I first went gently into that dark night by planning my own funeral service. I pinned it down to specifics: poems, scripture reading, prayers, hymns and music that I would like to have read, sung or played. That seemed less intimidating than writing my obit. Deciding on the particulars to include was an eye opener: just what was the appropriate material to express my personal feelings? What was I feeling specifically about my own death? Did I really want to know? What would I say now that I had the last word?
This is complicated; conventional wisdom dictates that the funeral or the ‘celebration of life’ is offered for the living, not the dead. Yet here I am planning something custom designed to my own peculiar tastes with little thought to the inclinations of those who may show up. It flips the occasion around. It makes the funeral all about me even though we say it’s supposed to be all about them.
An exercise like this may surface character deficits in ourselves we may not like. I drifted off on a tangent thinking who’d be at my funeral. Then I felt angry at the ones I decided wouldn’t, but whom I thought ought to be there. I was not doing this thing right.
In designing this solemn occasion, my narcissism surfaced with a vengeance. There it was, alive and well and ready to be snatched away, along with me, by the jaws of death.
Back to the drawing board. Just what is an obituary, anyway? What is it supposed to be about?
I conscientiously read the obituaries in a couple of papers printed in a week’s time. I looked for the common thread that ran through them. The announcement of a death was of course the primary purpose, a way to inform those in the community who’d once been part of the deceased’s life that this person was gone.
Almost all the obits included when and where the death occurred. It listed the deceased’s relatives. Some obits were brief statements notifying the death, but little information beyond that. They noted where services were being held and some indicating where memorial gifts could be sent.
Basic biographical material appeared, some including place of origin, education and employment.
I noticed two kinds of obits. One described the deceased’s career in detail and the contributions to the community. Others were more about the interests and activities that the deceased enjoyed, like art or gardening, fishing and hunting. For those who had high profile careers, the obit described their career at some length.
A few expressed an understanding of death in religious terms like, “was called home” or “went to the Lord.” “Passing away” or “departing this life” were the prevailing ways in which the death was described. “After a lingering illness” suggested that the dying had been a long process and hinted at the suffering endured by all involved. Several obits invited readers to share memories of the deceased and email them to the family.
How can anyone describe an entire life, including what that life meant to others, in the brief paragraphs of an obituary? There’s no way. At best, we can only allude to it.
In that regard, I noticed that in describing the deceased, two words appeared in several obituaries: the words, loving, and devoted. The words identified a particular quality of relationship to the deceased that the authors of the obituary wished to share with others. The appearance of those words created a tone, although because of the limits of an obit, in what ways they were devoted and loving were never developed.
When I considered how I would write my obit, I own, to my embarrassment, that I first thought of documenting my career accomplishments, professional and literary as the focus. I didn’t catch on right away what this implied about me and my life. Then it hit me: I was saying to the world, look at all I’ve done, or putting it differently, I am what I do or what I did.
I didn’t like what I was thinking.
Jack Kornfield, in his spiritual classic, A Path with Heart, begins the book by posing the question to readers, “Did I love Well?”
“Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we’ve been given, with our hearts,” Kornfield adds.
The challenge Kornfield poses in his book is to understand our lives not as status earned and achievements won, but as a way of being. Being devoted and loving aren’t achievements, but more like attitudes, and when seen over the full spectrum of a life, are all that matter at the end of the day. People who work with the dying document this over and over in the stories they hear from patients and relatives. One of the most common laments or regrets heard is that “I never said to this or that person how much I loved them, or conversely, never thanked them for the love they offered me.”
I think Kornfield captures the essence of our lives: that we live life to the fullest when touching one another and touching the life we have been given, with our hearts.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.