A friend has just passed away. He and I shared a hobby with others over decades.
His obituary was extensive and well thought out. Mentioned his upbringing, his college education which he did not complete. A job where he had been injured badly when young that I had never heard of. His family, fiancee, and the hobby we shared. Various other jobs.
Unmentioned is his former wife, whom he was with for well over a decade. I knew her when he hosted some events for the hobby and she was there, they hosted it in their home above a store which she owned. Eventually the business went south and there was a bankruptcy. They were both heavy at one time, then she got gastric bypass surgery and he didn’t. We only found out that they split when he showed up to another event with his current partner. His current partner participated more in his hobby than his old one had, which I would guess was gratifying to him.
I just think it’s interesting how ex spouses are typically eliminated from obituaries. I don’t suppose I want my ex wife included in mine. With my friend, he never had any children with his former wife, so I wonder if she even knows that he’s dead. We had not seen him for a couple of years ourselves due to Covid, and she only had limited contact info for our group.
Obituaies are written by either the survivors or the deceased themselves before they pass. They only tell you what they want remembered. So obviously the ex wife was already dead to him and he wanted no mention of her.
Not unusual at all, he must have been from the school of say something nice or say nothing at all.
I think if you have kids with someone, they should be included in the obit, or if they were wanted in the obit by the deceased. I wouldn’t mind my ex being in my obit, he and I had an amicable divorce.
FIL died last December. My wife and her sisters were married, but not her mom - his wife of 30 years. Does seem a tad odd, when a LONG obit ostensibly summed up his life, but omitted such a significant detail.
Of course, it didn’t mention that he was a bigamist and a complete scumbag either…
We had a case of battling obits at my newspaper a few years ago, one put in by a man’s current wife and one by his ex-wife. They were very different, but both were printed because there was nothing scurrilous contained in either one. The current family doesn’t own the rights to publish an obituary, anyone can do so if they want to pay the expense of it.
Keep in mind that newspaper obituaries are essentially classified ads, and newspapers charge by the line or word for them. Although my local newspaper doesn’t publish its rates, one area funeral home says that the newspaper chares about $150 for a basic, four-line death notice (which would barely cover the time and location of the funeral.) At those prices, a lot of people will decide including the deceased’s former spouse is a luxury they can skip.
I guess in the OP, the obit mentioned the deceased’s hobbies and interests, and his ex was neither.
How about one the other way. I have an acquaintance at work. He got married but his wife died in childbirth.
When he got remarried, almost ten years later, there was a huge display about the late wife, I found it somewhat creepy. Talk about the ghost at the banquet!
I mean, sure, remember her, she was the mother of his child. But not at the wedding to the new wife!
Funeral homes have the capability of hosting obits on thier websites, which is where most people will read them, not some hardcopy. I don’t really think cost per line is an issue at this point.
I think it’s a fascinating issue, being divorced myself and the impact of that. There are cases where the divorce is somewhat mutual, both parties are in agreement as to why it happened. In many others it’s people splitting apart and going off in two different directions.
My divorce experience was akin to a death. If someone gave me the Ebeneezer Scrooge or George Bailey treatment, took me through the events of my life, it would be a disconnect for the marriage because the person going back to the past (present day me) and the person actually in the marriage (me back then) aren’t really the same person at this point.
A lot of my marriage experience at this point is blocked out. I have to make an effort to remember how we were as a couple and some of the things that happened.
So I relate to the impact of a once huge part of someone’s life being effectively scrubbed from memory and the historical record.
Way I have seen it, the kids are mentioned, current partner is mentioned, current partner is referred to in a way that they are clearly not the bio parent, you connect the dots.
It depends. My kids love their mom and keep in touch with her, but they know I want nothing to do with her. When my son got married he wanted me to come, and I did, surprising him because he’d invited his mom. I avoided her like the plague but had a great time.
My brothers been married and divorced three times. When I told him that his first wife (from our teenage years) had died he stated “One down, two to go!”. Doubt he is going to include any of them in his obit.
He did relent and state that in hindsight the first one wasn’t as bad as the last two given their youth. I went to her funeral and shared a picture with her son from her second marriage of my brother with her in their hippie days. He was very glad to see his mom at 16 actually enjoying life and not of her final years.
Unless you’re famous yourself, you won’t get a journalist writing your obituary. Whomever does write it will be close to you and will skip that.
Were your parents divorced? I bet that if you surveyed the children of divorce the overwhelming majority would disagree with that, not all of course. My father hated my mother and I wrote the obituary. Mentioning my mom would have been insanely inappropriate.
Many years ago I was scanning family photos and making slide shows that would be transferred to discs and distributed to family. Naturally I found some of my ex brother-in-law, who had really treated my sister badly. I mentioned it and she said to go ahead and include the photos. “He’s still the father of our children,” she reasoned.
That would work for some situations.
No, my parents weren’t divorced.
My statement presumed that some children would want it acknowledged. If you’re in a particular situation where you know otherwise, of course not.
That said, I knew a guy who died and his ex was at the funeral. They had a pretty bitter divorce in the not-too-distant-past, but their three kids were also in attendance so nobody was going to turn her away. IIRC she was mentioned in the obit. He probably would have hated it but she’s the only parent remaining to the kids, probably another reason his surviving family made nice.
