Obituary Humor?

[BarbaraJane]

Obituary Humor?

In the spirit of my own twisted and dark humor, I have always enjoyed reading the obituaries.   I know it sounds horrible but it is a habit that started when I was really rather young.  I dated a boy when I was in high school who was a delivery boy for a florist.  He always checked the obits to see how busy it would be the next day or two at work.  And, as I also worked for a greenhouse/florist, I began glancing at them too, just to see how busy the girls up front would be.  Then, when I started working for a surgeon several years later, I really began to read them closely since some of our patients would sadly show up in that particular section of the paper.  And after that - - well, I guess it was just a habit.  I even read the obituaries when I lived in towns where I knew no one but my own husband and children. 

There is something about the way obituaries are written that simply intrigues me.  I mean, let's face it, an obituary is pretty much the final account of a person's whole life.  Some newspapers write obituaries as if they are little mini-biographies.  Some papers merely state the facts - - birth, death, survivors.  In the local paper where I currently reside, the obituaries have taken a peculiar turn.  The Daily Independent used to be a just-the-facts kind of obituary, nothing flowery or too lengthy.  During this time, I still read them faithfully and sometimes found them almost amusing in that some people mentioned so very many survivors.  It was like a puzzle trying to fit all of them into one person's life.  Those were always my favorites.

Then, a few years ago, The Daily Independent started a new policy.  Instead of just-the-facts type of obituaries, people had an option to have a "death notice" which was just the very barest of facts listed.  A "death notice" would be printed free of charge.  However, if you wanted more that the bare-bones type of notice, the family of the deceased could pay for an obituary.  This option afforded the family a lot of lee-way to publish facts about the deceased and mention however many survivors and so on and so forth.  And, as you can imagine, sometimes these obituaries can get fairly lengthy.  But, oh what entertainment it has provided me. 

The first thing that I love about the new obits is that so many people opt for the person's birth name accompanied by a nickname in parentheses.  These nicknames just crack me up.  After all, unless you know someone personally, their nickname usually just sounds silly.  There have been times when I have read an obituary with a nickname and just stopped at the name and pondered how in the world someone could have managed to get such a crazy pet name.  John (Pickle Feet) Doe or Jane (Booger) Doe paint such a picture that all I can do is smile.

The other thing about the new obit policy is that the survivors can pick any kind of descriptive terminology to explain what happened to the deceased person.  My mother used to hate it when people said "passed away" instead of "died."  She used to say it did not make them any less dead to use a gentler term than the word "die."  And I never quite understood that sentiment until I started reading some of the obits under the new policy.  Sometimes the first line of the obituary is so long I almost forget what I am reading.  Sometimes the deceased has passed from this world into the loving and waiting arms of his/her personal Lord and Savior in the company of many family members and friends who sadly mourn the loss of such a gentle and compassionate soul but who will somehow find the strength to continue on in the spirit that "Goober" would have loved and appreciated.  How's that for a run-on sentence?  No, I think I will pass on the flowery description of my death.  Just state my name and then say I'm dead.  People will get the picture without all the fluff.  Really.

And though I sometimes feel a slight tinge of guilt for finding entertainment in the announcement of someone's death, I cannot make myself stop reading them.  Some of them are chalked full of juicy tidbits of information.  Sometimes it is just a slight innuendo like when the survivors are all listed and at the very end is "a special companion."  What the hell is that?  A person could read a world of information into something like that.  One time I read about a man who had died and, by chance, I knew this man's daughter.  And I also happened to know that the two of them had a love/hate relationship at best.   She mentioned all of her father's accomplishments from birth until his long awaited death.  And tucked in all those details of his life she made this comment: "He attend Such and Such college and made several close friends, one who even shared his bed. . ."  What?  Yes, that is what it said.  I read it over and over, trying to decide if a word had been left out or some other typo had made the sentence read incorrectly.  No, I could find nothing.  That is exactly what his vindictive daughter wanted to convey. 

Tonight I stumbled upon an obituary that just stunned me.  As I have become accustomed to the flowery descriptions for death, I was shocked to read: John Doe, 29, of Somewhere, formerly of Elsewhere.  Period. Yep, that was it.  There was no verb, just a sentence fragment stating a name, age, and residence.  I am assuming this young man died as later in the death notice it did mention a burial service.  But the initial sentence sort of left it up to the reader's imagination as to what might have occurred.  And the fact that it was located in the obituary section was a pretty big hint, I guess.

I have often wondered why there is not someone on staff at the newspaper to help guide the survivors on what information to include and how to word some of the details they want to include.  Perhaps some things might be omitted or re-worded to make them sound a little less crass.  But maybe that is too much to ask since there apparently is no one to edit and/or proof the rest of the paper for typos and grammatical error either.  Yikes, a little slam on the old Daily Independent there. 

So, after all these years of obituary reading, I have come up with a plan.  I have told my daughter that when I die, I want my obituary to be as long as possible and filled full of a mixture of fact and fiction.  I think she should say things that are completely false but wrapped around an actual fact.  I feel certain that this type of obituary will bring in a good crowd to my visitation.  And while we are on that subject, I have also requested that my casket be closed and a beautiful picture be placed on top of my casket - - of someone else.  I figure people are going to talk anyway.  I might as well give them enough to keep them busy.  Maybe it will take their mind away from sorrowful thoughts and leave them laughing which is what I would prefer to be remembered for anyway. 

And there it is, my parentheses:  Barbara (Leave-em-Laughing) Delaney.  Dead.   Ooh, somehow, that last word was very uncomfortable to type.  Maybe just a little bit of fluff, you know, to go along with all the fantastic lies might be okay.  I'll be dead anyway.  I guess my survivors can just do whatever it takes to get them through.  And maybe that is what it's all about anyway.

[Lb128f]

Jul. 23, 2009 at 1:00 AM

Good! And, funny...but, true! :-) A little humor never hurts! You know...you could always write your own Obit...I'm sure it would be much more interesting than if someone else wrote it!