THE LIVES WE LIVE

As I have aged, my view of obituaries has changed. When I was younger, I usually ignored obituaries. Many young people find death a morbid preoccupation unless circumstances force them to pay attention. Given that most obituaries pertain to older people, perhaps ignoring death when a person is young makes a kind of sense.

I don’t know when I started reading obituaries, but I don’t think this change of habit has anything to do with a preoccupation with death. Instead, my interest in obituaries has more to do with accepting that every human life is a once-in-the-universe story and with obituaries often offering examples of beautiful writing.

I heard a speaker many years ago say that what is important in a notice that a person lived from 1935-2025 is not the date of birth nor the date of death, but what happened in the “dash” in between. If obituaries listed only the dates of birth and death, I doubt if any of us would bother to read them. Obituaries shed light on how a person lived between those dates, what she achieved in those years, and what values he lived by. It’s life, not death, that is at the center of obituaries.

I know that some folk take a cynical view of obituaries, believing that an obituary whitewashes the life of a person, making saints of sinners. This accusation surfaced recently in a community in Wisconsin that is well-known to my wife and me. When a cantankerous neighbor died, a man whose temper had gotten him in legal trouble quite often in the past, his obituary lauded his compassion toward others. Several friends commented that the obituary was simply a family-constructed lie.

But some of us knew that labelling his obituary a lie wasn’t completely true. The truth was that this neighbor was, at times, someone whom anyone could call on in a pinch. And we saw enough of this neighbor to know that he was also a loving grandfather. Was that all of him? No, but who of us is all good with no bad?

From my current practice of reading the lengthy obituaries in the Sunday New York Times, I have noticed that the more famous people are, the more likely their obituaries will mention both their achievements and failures. In other words, their life stories are a mix of the good and the bad, with failure often affecting a person more than success.

I find life stories that reveal both the highs and lows of a person’s life to be more interesting to read and also more comforting. Even in the world of religion, the most admired saints often had troubled pasts and, not infrequently, lapses in their later lives. A classic example of the latter is Gandhi, the Mahatma—the “great soul”—whom the psychologist Erik Erikson criticized for his insensitive treatment of his wife. Erikson’s insight didn’t destroy my respect for Gandhi. Instead, the criticism made him more human.

When I hear that more people are writing their own obituaries, I’m not sure how to react. For people with control issues, writing one’s own obituary might be a final attempt to “control the story,” if not to mask the truth. On the other hand, a self-written obituary might be an exercise in healthy humility. I recall the prayer from the early Church, “Lord, forgive me, the first of sinners,” which seems quite wise.

The truth is that each of our lives contain moments of nobility and moments of regret. It seems wiser to learn from what we regret and move on than to spend energy trying to pretend to be better than what and who we are.