My father and I have a peculiar habit. Within certain parameters we read the obituaries of people we do not know.
For me I always read the obituaries of people whose ages are listed as 99 or 100. For the former it is to see how close they came to the big one, and for the latter it is to see how much they cleared the big one by.
My father reads the obituaries of women at least 85 or older, because he jokes they are almost always widows, that very few elderly women are listed as “survived by” a husband.
My best story is about the obituary of a guy who diedtwo days before his hundredth birthday. The last line of the obit was priceless. It stated “The party planned for his hundredth birthday will go on as scheduled.”
And just yesterday my dad was surprised to see an old lady’s obit. She was indeed 100, and was survived by her elderly husband. They had been married for eighty one years.
So how weird are my father and I? Does anyone else do something like this?
I used to wallpaper my office with obits from the NY Times. They had to be semi-famous people (Tiny Tim and Jimmy the Greek - two examples), people who originally invented some well-known product (the guy who invented day-glo paint), or someone whom I had heard of, but for some reason or another, fell off the radar scope (the lady who used to do a gardening show on PBS). It made for interesting reading when I was pretending to work.
Glad to know I am not alone. Someday I want to find the obituary Tom Lehrer was referring to when he said “Last December there appeared in the papers, the juiciest, spiciest,raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read.”(It was Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, married three times, with, according to Lehrer, a number of other relationships.)
Actually yes on slow news days. I think there is something really morbid about doing it on a regular basis but whatever floats your boat. On the other hand, I can see how it is sort of interesting.
Wow! 81 years. Most couples don’t make it to 8 years.
i read the obits of the people i know i’ve taken care of…i’m a nurse. it’s much better to remember them the way their family saw them than how they were while they were in hospital. now i make it a point to try to learn something about them while they’re still here, if they can tell me.
When I was a little kid, I would look to see the oldest person who had died, and ones born in exotic places. It’s kind of sick, looking back on it. Young people that had died always sort of freaked me out, because they almost always died of an accident.
I routinely read the obituaries. Sometimes I’ll discover that a relative of someone I know has died, or someone I went to high school with, or even a member of my church. I realized long ago that it’s quite easy to miss someone’s funeral if you don’t read the obituaries; you can talk to someone (or about them) on Sunday and they will have died and been buried by the following week.
hangs head in shame
My name is Salem and I’m an obituaryaholic.
I have had a morbid fascination with them for a really, really long time. I scan for mention of the town I live and work in now, the town for which I’m the newspaper’s editor and for the town I grew up in. I also notice very young people/children which inevitably saddens and frightens me, for people around my age (same reaction), and elderly folks around my Dad’s age (just the sad part there).
But of course since I work for two newspapers, I have to keep up with stuff like this so I can make sure they get published. Yes, I now get paid to read the obits. hehe
Go ahead and think it, my family thinks I’m sick, too.
I do it too, to see how old the oldest person who died was. Today: Virginia Gott Coughlan, 102, survived by three daughters, 22 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren, and 3 great-great-grandchildren.
I read them occasionally, but only the ones that are long and about old people. I think it’s kind of cool to see someone’s life story, all of the things they did. More than once I’ve come away thinking to myself “Wow, I would have liked to have met that person.”
Well, do you mean the obits of famous people, or the tiny obits of locals? I rarely read the latter, but I am not known as The Queen of the Dead for nuthin’—I have a four-drawer filing cabinet crammed with obits of show-business people I’ve been collecting since (I shudder to realize) the mid-1960s.
I am rather annoyed with the NY Times, though; they have been falling down on the job: neither biographer Alexander Walker nor actress Marie Trintignant have gotten obits.
The best show-biz obits (since Peter Bart flushed Variety down the terlet) is the monthly publication Classic Images, which covers everyone who had any connection with the industry.
My grandfather reads the obits to gather unusual names that my sister, my cousin and I should not name our potential future children. He will carry them around in his shirt pocket until he can get to his computer and add them to a growing Word document. I checked about a year ago and it was 20 pages then. Just names. Bizarre.
I read them as well, Baker. I always check to see if anyone I know has passed on, if anyone has the same last name as I have ( its happened a couple of times.) and to see what age a person is when they pass.
I hear it’s the best place to find an apartment, job, used car, furniture…
Yes, I got a car that way one time. I needed a car, knew the lady who died, struck up a conversation with her son, and a week later, had a $300 car that lasted 2 years.
