Do you read the obits in your newspaper, even though...

[jandrok]

...you don't know someone who has died recently? I have found myself reading them a lot more often lately. Some are touching, some are (intentionally) humorous, some are perfunctory, some are just heart-rending. Almost all of them are interesting. These people that I didn't know lived lives, had stories to tell, and played out the adventure of life to it's completion. Reading the obits used to seem a little bit like prying to me, but now I'm seeing it as a measure of respect for those who have passed on. Their stories need to be acknowledged, somehow.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

1. I read the ones in the Wichita Eagle online

Because I don't live there anymore. I agree with your sentiments totally.

[ewagner]

2. I read them

from the City I used to live in because some of my friends and friends of my Mother-in-law who lived there were quite elderly. We learned of the passing of a distant relative through the paper because there was noone left in the family to call us.

[jandrok]

3. That's pretty interesting.

My father-in-law subscribes to his old hometown newspaper for that very reason.

[AlCzervik]

4. i tend to if they have a picture, especially someone young

[fishnfla]

5. Yes, every day

I work with alot of elderly clients, so I read them all in the local paper( I read 3 papers a day overall). I try and imagine what their lives were like. You are right alot of them are generic. The best ones are those that are written by the deceased themselves. There was one today from an 18 year-old cancer victim, he wrote a paragraph from each letter of "smile" ( the "l" was for love, etc) It was a poem, really touching.
There was one last week for an 100 year old lady born overseas, no known relatives, she died in a nursing home, it was only 2 sentances long. That would be the essence of loneliness to me.

[jandrok]

6. Yeah, those are the heartbreakers.

The one or two sentence obits where you can tell that the person had little or no family. That's kind of why I started paying more attention to the obit section. Somebody needs to acknowledge that person's life, even if it's a stranger looking at a newspaper.

[fishnfla]

7. Fess up: Do you ever wonder what your obit will say?

" he was a life long member of democratic underground, 333,654 posts"

[jandrok]

8. LOL! Nah, I'll never get a post count that high.

I would HOPE that my obit would say that I was a good father, a good husband, and a good son. I don't want it to be one of those morose ones, I want it be celebratory. Big picture of me with a lampshade on my head or something, and directions to the wake.

[kodi]

9. yes, i rub my finger across their pix and think of their lives as i do it

sometimes there is an obit of an old man or woman, yet a pix of them is obviously from 30-40 years ago and i think of who placed it in the paper and how they found just that pix and wonder why they chose that particular pix, if it meant anything to the survivor about the deceased and i think of what the deceased person might have been thinking of when it was taken and the life they had yet before them.

we are all one after all.

[jandrok]

15. I look at the pics carefully, too, and wonder what the...

...person was like. The older photos are always interesting to me.

[Ptah]

10. I'm trying to be funny here -

I'm always amazed that people die in alphabetical order.

:shrug:

[CBHagman]

11. I skim them every day.

To be honest, mostly it's to keep up with current events and learn which activists, writers, actors, et al have left us. The phrase "Gee, I didn't know he/she was still alive" goes through my brain often enough.

The Washington Post has started running articles on the lives of local people who made a difference, and I must say that's a welcome relief. There are so many unsung heroes.

Occasionally I do run across a name I know. Once I ran across the obituary of a former co-worker -- before anyone could tell me he was gone. :-( That was a shock.

[NeoTraitors]

12. I read one the other day that I really got a kick out of.

It talked about an old man and how much he loved the Chicago Cubs. It wasn't until the very end that I learned that he had founded one of the largest companys in our area.

I appreciated it because it really showed that he had his priorities straight! (Good luck to your 'Stros when my team is out of it- which should be within the next week or so.)

[jandrok]

14. I've read a lot that mention a favorite sports team.

Quite a few with pictures of the person in the team's colors and such. Fans are fans until the very end.

Don't bury your Cubbies yet. You beat the Cardies today pretty handily. Thanks for the shout-out to the 'Stros, though. There's always room on the bandwagon!

:D

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Yes, because these days, especially now that I'm back in the city where I

grew up, I find the names of people I knew as a child or even, now that I'm over fifty, the occasional high school or college classmate. :-(