Writing an Obituary That Actually Means Something
I spend a lot of time reading obituaries. Most of them are forgettable. They follow a template so rigid that you could swap any name in and get the same result. Jeffrey Silverman's obituary was different because it actually sounded like a person wrote it about someone they knew, not a committee filling in blanks on a form. The key difference I noticed was in the details. Standard obituary templates call for birth date, surviving family members, career highlights, and a closing line about service arrangements. The Silverman piece did all of that too, but it also included specific, grounded information — a mention of his tendency to fix things around the house with duct tape and patience, the exact diner where he had lunch with his brother every Sunday for thirty years, the fact that he kept a drawer full of interesting rocks from various hiking trails. These details are not decorative. They are the only thing that makes an obituary worth reading after the funeral is over. Here is how you structure something like that without it turning into a eulogy-length essay.
Start with the basic facts. Name, age, date of death, location. Keep it to one paragraph. Do not pad it with adjectives like "beloved" or "cherished" — those words are empty without context. If you want someone to understand why Jeffrey was beloved, describe the Sunday diner habit. That does more work in one sentence than three adjective strings ever would. The second paragraph should cover the practical survival list. Spouse, children, siblings, parents if applicable. This is the part that genealogists and distant relatives actually need. Put it here so people can find it without digging through a three-page narrative. I once tried to help a friend track down a half-brother from his mother's side and spent twenty minutes wading through flowery prose about his childhood pet before finding the actual name of the sibling in question. The family really needs the straightforward list up front. Then you get into the living part. This is where most obituaries fail because the writer is unsure whether to be professional or personal. The answer is to be both, in sequence. Lead with what the person did — career, education, military service, community involvement — but anchor each point in a real moment. Instead of saying "he was a dedicated teacher for forty years," say "he taught chemistry at Lincoln High from 1982 to 2021 and kept a jar of M&M's on his desk for students who failed his midterm." The second version gives you a concrete image. The first gives you a resume line.
The final section handles arrangements. Church, cemetery, time, memorial donations if any. Keep this tight. Nobody reads past this paragraph looking for emotional content, and making it verbose wastes space better used for actual memories. One thing I learned the hard way: get permission before including sensitive details. I wrote an obituary for a neighbor that mentioned her struggle with addiction in recovery. It was true, it was important context, and her family asked me to remove it before publication. The obituary ran fine without it, but the lesson stuck. Specificity is valuable, but only when the people who matter most are comfortable with it. Some families want the full picture. Some want a cleaner version. Ask before you assume. Another counter-intuitive point that people miss: the length of an obituary matters less than its specificity. A two-paragraph obituary with four genuine, verifiable details will outlast a full-page generic one every time. I have seen people paste their entire LinkedIn profile into an obituary and then wonder why no one remembered the person afterward. Lists of achievements are not memories. They are documentation, and documentation has its place in a will or a professional archive, not in a public notice meant to capture who someone actually was.
Get the Full Details
If you want a reference point while writing, read the Jeffrey Silverman piece straight through before drafting your own. Notice that it never tells you how to feel about him. It shows you enough facts that you figure it out on your own. That restraint is harder than it looks, but it is what separates an obituary people keep from one they file away and forget.
