For Mary T. O’Connell. I loved it.
OK, that is wonderfully off-the-wall.
A lot of people would think that sort of thing disrespectful, but if she was really the person they wrote about, she would’ve loved it.
I hope my survivors are as free and kind with my obit.
Funerals aren’t about death; they’re about life.
I’m reminded of one of my uncles who died. After his death, my aunt dedicated a bench along a nearby hiking trail to him. She was thinking of all sorts of schmaltzy and saccharine things to put on the plaque, until her kids reminded her that that just wasn’t Dad at all. They eventually settled on “To David, an avid bench enthusiast”.
The comments underneath indicate that it was pretty spot on about her.
Fantastic!
This.
A lovely and loving tribute. Also a damn fine piece of writing. After reading the six succinct descriptive paragraphs I feel like I knew Mary well.
I hope the OP doesn’t mind if I post this obituary, from not quite five years ago. For fun I actually wrote to my Congressional representative and asked them to repeal Daylight Savings Time, in honor of Harry.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sunherald/obituary.aspx?pid=163538353
Damn, that was beautiful. I actually teared up at the “and you” line, and the last line.
That was one loved woman.
I loved all of these. 
“He took fashion cues from no one.”
Yeah, me too.
In a world of saccharine and sterile obits, and even more sterile grave markers (“SMITH”), this is refreshing.
This makes me think of wandering old cemetaries, feeling like a morbid idiot, just to read the far more eloquent passages on the headstones/markers than what we see today. I like that stuff.
If you’re really into this kind of shit, I recently volunteered at my local library to help them “clean up” their obit database to make it “cleaner” for anscestry.com seekers and the like.
Go read some microfiche of obits from the 19th and early 20th century. Quite elaborate, often super-Christian, but always entertaining, unless it was an infant death. Lots of times from those days they don’t even have a name, which is creepy to me, but understandable given the mortality rate in those times.