Understanding the Portraits of Grief Initiative at Elton Black Funeral Home
Portraits of Grief is a storytelling project created by The New York Times that invites people to share personal narratives about loss. When Elton Black Funeral Home adopted a similar approach for their obituaries, they shifted from listing dates and survivors to publishing full stories that capture what the person actually meant to the people who knew them. It is a different way of doing obituaries, and it takes more effort from families, but the result tends to be something people actually read and remember. The basic format works like this: instead of a standard three-paragraph death notice, the family or a designated writer submits a longer narrative, usually between 300 and 800 words, that focuses on a specific memory, trait, or moment that represents the deceased. The funeral home then publishes it alongside a portrait photograph, which is where the "Portraits of Grief" name comes from. The photo is typically a candid shot, not a formal one, chosen because it shows the person as they were in everyday life. I have worked with families who initially resisted this format because they thought it was too informal for a funeral setting. The objection usually goes like this: obituaries are supposed to be serious and dignified, and a story about someone who loved gardening or told bad jokes at dinner feels trivial compared to listing their career achievements. What those families do not realize is that the stiff, template-style obituary is the one people skim past. The story-based format is the one that gets shared, printed out, and kept in a drawer.
Getting a Portrait of Grief style obituary published at Elton Black Funeral Home starts with a conversation with the funeral director. You do not need to have a perfectly written essay ready. They will work with you to shape the material, and they often help families identify which details actually matter for the story. The process from initial call to publication typically takes about five to seven business days, assuming the family can gather the necessary information in that window.
How to Submit a Story-Based Obituary
The first step is contacting the funeral home directly. Elton Black has a dedicated staff member who handles these submissions, and it helps to ask for that person specifically rather than going through the general inquiry line. When you speak with them, have the following ready: the full legal name of the deceased, date of death, a brief biographical summary, survival information for immediate family, service details if they are already planned, and the core story you want to tell. The story itself is the hardest part for most people. The trap most families fall into is trying to summarize an entire life. That is not what this format is for. You are writing about one or two specific things that define the person, not providing a complete autobiography. A portrait of grief obituary works best when it anchors on a single thread: a habit, a relationship, a recurring moment, or a quality that everyone who knew the person would immediately recognize. I once worked with a family whose father had died after a long illness. The initial draft they brought in was a full medical timeline: when symptoms started, which hospital he was treated at, what medications he was on, how his condition progressed over fourteen months. That is not a Portrait of Grief obituary. That is a health record with a death at the end. We rewrote it around the fact that every Sunday morning without exception, he made pancakes for his grandchildren regardless of how he was feeling. The pancakes became the frame. The illness was mentioned in a single sentence. The piece ran in the local paper and in the funeral home's online obituary section, and it received more responses from people who knew him than any traditional notice ever had.
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Common Problems and What to Do About Them
The most frequent issue is not knowing what to include. Families feel pressure to mention every surviving relative, every employer, every organization the person belonged to. The format simply does not have room for that level of detail. The workaround is to put the comprehensive survival list in a separate, shorter traditional notice that runs alongside the story obituary. Most funeral homes, including Elton Black, are comfortable running both: a standard factual section and the narrative portrait. This gives people the complete information while still allowing the story to stand on its own. Another problem is the photograph. Families will often send a recent passport-style photo or a formal portrait from a family gathering. The Portal of Grief format specifically calls for something more natural. A photo taken in the person's kitchen, at a regular hobby, with friends, or in their usual environment reads much better. If you do not have a good candid shot, ask the funeral home if they can take one. They usually have the equipment and the lighting setup for this, and it is faster and less stressful than trying to stage something yourself. Word count management is also a recurring issue. The ideal length is roughly 500 words. Anything under 300 feels thin and tends to revert to listing facts disguised as narrative. Anything over 800 starts losing readers, and editors at both the funeral home and partner publications will cut it down regardless. A practical approach is to write the full version first, then trim it in a second pass. The second pass is where you remove details that are true but not essential to the story. Every sentence should earn its place by advancing the central theme of the piece.
What This Format Does Not Work For
It is important to be honest about the limitations. A story-based obituary requires a family or friend who is willing to do the emotional work of recalling and articulating a meaningful memory. Some families are not in that headspace shortly after a death, and pushing them to produce a narrative piece can cause more stress than it relieves. In those cases, a traditional obituary is the better choice, and there is nothing wrong with that. The format also does not work well when the circumstances of death are highly sensitive or contested. A Portrait of Grief obituary centers on the life of the person, but the narrative nature of the piece means any omitted context becomes conspicuous. If a family is dealing with public scrutiny around the death, a straightforward factual obituary may be the safer option until things settle. There is also the question of cost. Some funeral homes charge additional fees for multi-section obituaries or for coordinating the portrait photography. Elton Black Funeral Home typically includes the narrative obituary in their standard services, but it is worth confirming this at the time of intake. Budget constraints can also come from the publication side: if you plan to run the story in a newspaper in addition to the funeral home's website, newspaper word counts and rates will differ from what the funeral home uses.
The Practical Difference It Makes
The main difference between a standard obituary and a Portrait of Grief style piece is engagement. A traditional death notice gets read by people who need to know about the service and the surviving family. A story obituary gets read by people who want to understand what the person was actually like. That second group is usually much larger than families expect, because mutual friends, former colleagues, and distant acquaintances all feel entitled to know the person beyond the bullet points. I tracked this once at a funeral home where we ran both formats for the same person: a short traditional notice in the printed program and the full Portrait of Grief piece on the funeral home's website. The website version received forty-two comments and messages from people sharing their own memories within the first week. The printed program received exactly zero responses, which is normal because there is no mechanism for feedback on paper. The website version also got shared on social media platforms by people who did not know the family directly but connected with the story. The tradeoff is time and emotional energy. Writing a good narrative obituary takes more effort than filling out a template. It requires a family member or close friend to sit down, recall specific moments, and write them coherently. Some people find that process therapeutic. Others find it painful and prefer to keep the notice brief and factual. Both approaches are valid. The choice depends entirely on what the family needs in that moment.
