The obituary that gets your legacy exactly right
Crafting the obituary: a sacred task
The obituary is one of the most sacred responsibilities of journalists. As journalists, we’re recorders of a legacy; we have to get it right.
I would know: I’ve written hundreds in my career. Crafting the evocative obituary has always been one of the most demanding and personally rewarding tasks of my profession. And it’s a service I offer Eloquential clients and their families with a profound sense of honor and respect.
The obituary is your last shot. It is your family’s and community’s official remembrance. It is your legacy.
Every life deserves a well-crafted obituary
The Providence Journal in Rhode Island, the first paper I wrote for, had a delightfully democratic policy of running an obituary for anyone who asked. That could be a challenge if the deceased was someone who led a quiet or seemingly unremarkable life. We always strove to come up with a nugget for the lede that was honest, respectful, and compelling. So instead of “so-and-so died yesterday at age 89,” we would aim for, “Mrs. Adelaide Wickenden, eagle-eyed and merciless crackerjack bridge player, whose greatest achievement was raising four kind and honest sons,” etc.
I stand by the conviction of The Providence Journal: everyone deserves a well-crafted, interesting, and respectful obituary.
Grief: always familiar, always unique
Writing obituaries has acquainted me with the grief of others, grief that I never take for granted. I got my training writing obituaries for young soldiers killed in action in Vietnam. My job was to call shocked and bereft families who’d just been informed of their worst nightmare to ask if I could interview them in person and pick up a photo. I strove to do this with the utmost sensitivity. Sometimes families refused, which was their right, but often they were eager to talk about their loved one, and desperate for him to be well remembered.
One time I called a family only to realize they had not yet been notified of their son’s death. I managed to get off the phone without revealing the news, but my editor insisted I call them back to make deadline. Instead, I found a way to locate the family’s priest and got him to inform the family, and then to call me back once he had done so. It mattered to me then, as it does now, to never lose sight of a family’s suffering or pain.
Getting the legacy exactly right
While at The New York Times, I was on deadline to write a complex obituary of Harold Hochschild, an industrialist who, in spite or perhaps because of his corporate legacy, became a leading conservationist of the Adirondack Mountains, a cause close to my heart. When his son called the next day to thank me for getting the complicated obit “exactly right,” I felt a deep sense of satisfaction that I carry to this day. One little inaccuracy – a wrong date, a dropped initial — would have spoiled it for him, and for me.
Advance obits: no time like now
As a journalist, it can be a jarring task to call someone still very much alive, or their friends or relatives, to inform them you’re writing their obituary. These are called “advance obits” in the trade, which are assigned if a major figure may be ailing. Once they get over the shock of the request, the subjects for the most part are all too happy to talk about themselves for posterity.
One such advance obit was for Janet Reno, long-time attorney general for president Bill Clinton and the first woman to hold that position. Janet was someone I covered closely; I admired her for her integrity and caring, but was critical of her management style. Sadly, she was too ill with Parkinsons for me to interview her. But I was determined to capture her gritty and determined personality, however complicated, with lively writing:
When Reno arrived in Washington in 1993 as President Clinton’s third choice for the job, she cut an unusual figure for the nation’s top law enforcement official, not only because of her sex. She was tall (nearly 6’2”), single, and brought with her a somewhat mythic reputation as a woman who had wrestled alligators while growing up in rural south Florida, and as a tough prosecutor who wrestled mobsters and drug dealers in Miami.
https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-janet-reno-snap-story.html
Honoring the one you love
When I support a family in memorializing someone they love, it gives me a window into the lives of talented, extraordinary, deeply committed individuals which never fails to inspire me to re-examine my own life. They don’t have to be famous or with a chest of professional trophies; every life fascinates me. Here’s a testimonial I take particular pride in:
“When my wife died, I needed sensitive and expert writing and editing assistance . . . I wanted a fitting tribute to the woman I loved who had spent her professional life in service of the poor. Tim with his well-honed journalistic skills took a run-of-the-mill press release obituary from the government agency my wife had headed, and brought it to life with information gathered from me and others. The result was a quarter-page, above-the-fold obituary in the Washington Post acknowledging an international career devoted to alleviating poverty.”
Take control by writing your own obituary
Are you ready to start thinking about your own legacy, to capture what you are truly proud of in a manner that’s honest and thorough? It can be daunting, but it’s also a transformative experience to take stock of your own life while you’re still in control. It offers the potential to make amends, communicate love and gratitude, or establish fresh, achievable, and more meaningful goals.
I hope you’ll reach out to me to support you in this task; it’s always a privilege to captures one’s life. I will get yours exactly right.