Friday, December 26, 2014
On the Insufficiency of Obituaries
With December nearing its close, I find myself thinking as so many people do at this time of year about beginnings and endings. The latter weighs particularly heavy during these dark days of winter, this year more than most. The reason for this variation? A pair of funerals that I attended over the past six weeks. The first was in late November. The second was today.
The deceased in these two instances had little in common with one another. The first was a college classmate of mine, an occasional reader of this blog who had suffered quietly with a chronic illness all his life. He was undergoing treatment to deal with this condition when he suffered a stroke that robbed him of the ability to move or speak without profound effort. He died a few days later. He was only a little older than I am.
The second was my aunt, my grandfather's sister, who had lived more than a century before succumbing to illness. She was the first of three members of my family to teach at Underwood High School (my grandmother was the second), and it was fascinating comparing my experiences in the classroom with the issues she faced decades earlier. Though her sight and hearing declined as she grew older, her mind remained sharp right until the end.
Two deaths. One male, one female. One a friend, the other a relative. One who died too soon, one whose life exceeded the biblical threescore and ten by another score and a half...that is for those who are keeping score. Two deaths. Two memorial services. Two obituaries.
As a historian, I have a particular interest in obituaries and death notices. On multiple occasions, I have relied upon such materials as a source of biographical information when no other such records were readily available. The majority of us will fade into the background, melding into the white noise of eternity upon our passing. But for a handful there will be a published record, however brief, of who we were and where we lived, where we went to school and what we accomplished in our professional lives, who we loved and how we died. In a newspaper or online there will be some fleeting fragment of text that hints at the difference we made in the world, an affirmation that at one point or another there were people who cared about us.
I have reflected upon my own hypothetical obituary before, but today I was thinking about those associated with the two cases outlined above and particularly what each of them omitted. My college friend's obituary called attention to his numerous educational achievements and his fledgling career as a sports journalist. It alluded to the cause of his death and listed his surviving family members. It did not mention the encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, both literary and pop cultural. It did not talk about his love of puns and video games. It did not mention his fundamental kindheartedness and decency or a leadership ability that I often wished I could emulate when I succeeded him as president of our college quiz bowl team.
The death notice for my aunt was even shorter, surprising given how long she lived. More than one hundred years of life and all it merited was a list of surviving relatives. No mention was made of her teaching career or her love of travel. There was no discussion of her linguistic ability, her close relationships with her brothers and sisters, or her passion for storytelling. She lived through two world wars and eighteen different presidents. She was alive when the Titanic sailed, the Spirit of St. Louis flew, and human beings walked on the moon. She was a witness to all of the transformative political and technological changes of the 20th century, but you would hardly know it from the paltry handful of sentences in her obituary.
These were both good people. They lived meaningful lives. In the years allotted to them, they laughed and loved, forged close bonds with friends and family, and in the end they will be remembered. The question that lingers for me, however, is whether or not there is a way to overcome the deficiencies of the standard obituary. The problems associated the genre are obvious. Unless one is a world leader, Nobel laureate, or celebrity, word limits automatically constrain people to report only the most pertinent details, distilling an entire life to a few sentences. In the process, what is lost are the details, the anecdotes and personality quirks that reveal an inner life beyond the external realities of education, job, career, and surviving family.
Is there any way to preserve those? I suspect not, at least within the constraints of a standard obituary. But at the very least, we can do our best to remember our fallen friends and loved ones and to tell their stories on our own terms. Write them down or just reminisce out loud, but do not forget. They deserve better than that.
(1) comments
The deceased in these two instances had little in common with one another. The first was a college classmate of mine, an occasional reader of this blog who had suffered quietly with a chronic illness all his life. He was undergoing treatment to deal with this condition when he suffered a stroke that robbed him of the ability to move or speak without profound effort. He died a few days later. He was only a little older than I am.
The second was my aunt, my grandfather's sister, who had lived more than a century before succumbing to illness. She was the first of three members of my family to teach at Underwood High School (my grandmother was the second), and it was fascinating comparing my experiences in the classroom with the issues she faced decades earlier. Though her sight and hearing declined as she grew older, her mind remained sharp right until the end.
Two deaths. One male, one female. One a friend, the other a relative. One who died too soon, one whose life exceeded the biblical threescore and ten by another score and a half...that is for those who are keeping score. Two deaths. Two memorial services. Two obituaries.
As a historian, I have a particular interest in obituaries and death notices. On multiple occasions, I have relied upon such materials as a source of biographical information when no other such records were readily available. The majority of us will fade into the background, melding into the white noise of eternity upon our passing. But for a handful there will be a published record, however brief, of who we were and where we lived, where we went to school and what we accomplished in our professional lives, who we loved and how we died. In a newspaper or online there will be some fleeting fragment of text that hints at the difference we made in the world, an affirmation that at one point or another there were people who cared about us.
I have reflected upon my own hypothetical obituary before, but today I was thinking about those associated with the two cases outlined above and particularly what each of them omitted. My college friend's obituary called attention to his numerous educational achievements and his fledgling career as a sports journalist. It alluded to the cause of his death and listed his surviving family members. It did not mention the encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, both literary and pop cultural. It did not talk about his love of puns and video games. It did not mention his fundamental kindheartedness and decency or a leadership ability that I often wished I could emulate when I succeeded him as president of our college quiz bowl team.
The death notice for my aunt was even shorter, surprising given how long she lived. More than one hundred years of life and all it merited was a list of surviving relatives. No mention was made of her teaching career or her love of travel. There was no discussion of her linguistic ability, her close relationships with her brothers and sisters, or her passion for storytelling. She lived through two world wars and eighteen different presidents. She was alive when the Titanic sailed, the Spirit of St. Louis flew, and human beings walked on the moon. She was a witness to all of the transformative political and technological changes of the 20th century, but you would hardly know it from the paltry handful of sentences in her obituary.
These were both good people. They lived meaningful lives. In the years allotted to them, they laughed and loved, forged close bonds with friends and family, and in the end they will be remembered. The question that lingers for me, however, is whether or not there is a way to overcome the deficiencies of the standard obituary. The problems associated the genre are obvious. Unless one is a world leader, Nobel laureate, or celebrity, word limits automatically constrain people to report only the most pertinent details, distilling an entire life to a few sentences. In the process, what is lost are the details, the anecdotes and personality quirks that reveal an inner life beyond the external realities of education, job, career, and surviving family.
Is there any way to preserve those? I suspect not, at least within the constraints of a standard obituary. But at the very least, we can do our best to remember our fallen friends and loved ones and to tell their stories on our own terms. Write them down or just reminisce out loud, but do not forget. They deserve better than that.
