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Writing obituaries reminds us of our mortality
By Carl Heintze
On the first morning I went to work at my first job on a newspaper, an editor handed me a collection of obituaries from the morning paper and said, "Here, freshen these up."
I sat there for awhile wondering how one was supposed to "freshen up" an obituary, but eventually I spent a half an hour moving things around and rewriting them. Fortunately, I can't remember what he said when I turned them in.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of doing obituaries. From then on, through most of my days in the newspaper business, I got my share of obituaries to write, or rewrite.
It is a sobering way to begin the day. It reminds you of your mortality.
On the other hand, it also is very instructive. When you think about it, obituaries are like biographies, their form doesn't vary much: one is born, grows up, gets married, usually has children, grows old and then dies.
That's it, one can't alter the plot.
But a really good obituary writer can do much with this form, illuminating and making real the life of the recently deceased. Of course, it helps if the late lamented had an interesting life, filled with challenges and successes.
The life of the late Pierre Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada, comes to mind. He had charisma; he wrote and spoke many quotable lines; he saw Canada through difficult times; stemmed the process of Quebec's separatist movement, at least temporarily; married a flower child; had a wildly publicized married life; and then retired to tranquilty in his middle and later years. All valuable stuff for an obituary. His obituary writers have had a wonderful time with this material.
But there also are the obscure who these days don't even rate an obituary. If their families want to pay for it, they'll get a funeral notice (even more form-fitting than a written obituary) and perhaps an epitaph on a gravestone. Epitaphs can be interesting or inspiring, but usually they are a name and a beginning and ending date. Nothing more.
All this leads me to speculate on my own obituary, particularly as I keep getting closer to the time when I will need one. Not that I want one, you understand. Nobody does.
But everyone speculates, at some time or other in their lives, about how they will be remembered when they are gone--or if, for that matter.
For we all seek some kind of immortality, whether here or elsewhere. In these days when we tend to believe no one dies, and life, if not eternal, is certainly long, many of us tend to believe what we leave behind when we depart is as important as what we take with us elsewhere.
Or, in some cases, we believe if we can't take it with us, we're not going.
In the end, though, all of us are one day forced to sum up who we are, what we've done and why anyone should remember us at all
To do so is a sobering experience. Most of us have not moved the world much in one direction or another. Most of us have not really had much effect on the lives of others.
True, most of us have borne children which is a kind of immortality of its own. Most have had some kind of a job or jobs. Some of these occupations have contributed some lasting memorial. For instance, those who worked on Boulder or Glen Canyon dams made a mark on the world, a mark that's going to be around for at least a couple of centuries.
Those of us who fought in World War II, or in Korea, or in Vietnam, nudged the world one way or the other for eternity. The sum of our efforts made some kind of a difference whether good or bad. And presumably mankind will always remember the name of the first men to walk on the moon--even though, at the moment, I can't remember their names.
In the end, we are all forced to concede that our legacy is limited. It's only in aggregate that it matters, that just as our lives are made of the parts of many other lives, so have we made things happen minutely for others.
I can be satisfied with that. I can assume that the 20th century, which, after all, was my century, will be remembered because of some of the things I did while I was a part of it.
But writing that into an obituary seems fairly futile. So I guess I won't try to write mine just yet. Instead I hold out the hope that even though the hour is getting late, I can still anticipate the possibility that I'm destined for great things.
It's just that they haven't happened yet.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
