Writing an Obituary That Actually Means Something
Most people treat obituaries like a form you fill out on your way to the funeral home. You list the dates, the surviving family, the service details, and you're done. But when I worked at the newspaper for a while, I learned pretty quickly that the ones people actually remember are the ones written by someone who knew the person, not just the logistics of their life. I ran into a real problem last year when a family asked me to help draft an obituary for their father. The standard biographical template didn't capture who he actually was. He had spent forty years restoring old cars in his garage, adopted three rescue dogs, and was known for showing up to everyone's birthday with a terrible Jell-O mold. None of that fit into "He is survived by..." territory. We ended up writing the obituary in two passes: first the factual skeleton, then a separate narrative section that captured the actual person. The staff at The Gift Of Remembrance Grove, where the service was held, were willing to accommodate the longer format, which isn't always the case. Smaller publications sometimes charge by the line and push back hard on anything over 300 words. The practical workaround I use now is to interview at least two people who knew the deceased outside the immediate family. Siblings and children tend to repeat the same anecdotes. A coworker or a neighbor will give you the material that makes an obituary read like a human being instead of a resume. For the Bowersox piece, one of his colleagues from the union hall mentioned how he'd stay late helping younger members fill out paperwork for their first house. That detail meant more than another mention of his job title.
What Most People Get Wrong About Obituaries
Here's something nobody tells you: the obituary is not the same thing as the death notice. A death notice is a legal advertisement. It's concise, factual, and often bought by the family for public record purposes. An obituary is editorial content. It can be personal, it can be long, and it can include things that wouldn't belong in a formal notice. Mixing these up is the most common mistake I see. Families will submit a death notice to the newspaper's obituary desk and get it rejected for being too sparse, or they'll write a full obituary and run it only as a paid notice and lose half its impact. Another counter-intuitive point is that including flaws or difficulties actually strengthens an obituary. I've seen families omit mental health struggles, addictions, or estrangements because they want the deceased to look perfect. But readers can tell when something's missing. A well-written obituary from my years at the paper that acknowledged a person's battles while still honoring their life got more letters from readers saying it felt honest and comforting. Perfection reads as sterile. The logistical reality is that most newspapers have a submission window of 48 hours between the time of death and publication. That's tight. I'd recommend drafting everything before the funeral home calls are done. Have a backup copy saved locally, not just in an email, because hospital and funeral home Wi-Fi is unreliable when you need it most.
Structuring the Piece Without Sounding Robotic
Start with the essential facts in the first paragraph: full name, age, city of residence, date of death, and cause if the family wants that included. Then move into the narrative. This is where you put the stuff that makes people nod when they read it. Where they grew up. What they did that mattered to them. The small habits other people noticed. For survivors, list immediate family first, then extended family if space allows. Some papers require a specific format for this section, so check with the publication before submitting. The service information comes last, along with any donation requests. If the family wants contributions to go to a specific charity, name it directly. Vague requests like "donations preferred" get ignored. "Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to the local animal shelter at [address]" actually produces results. Word count matters more than people realize. A 200-word obituary in a Sunday paper might get buried in the listings. A 500-word one with a genuine voice gets clipped and saved. I've seen grandmothers cut entire paragraphs because they thought shorter was better. It wasn't. The readership data from my time at the desk showed a clear drop-off in engagement for anything under 150 words, unless the subject was exceptionally notable.
Get the Full Details
When to Write It Yourself Versus Using a Service
There are professional obituary writers and funeral home template services now. They exist, and some are genuinely good. But they also don't know your father the way you do. If you're writing it yourself and you're stuck, read three obituaries from different publications first. Not to copy them, but to calibrate your sense of tone. The New York Times obituaries are polished but distant. Local weekly papers can be warm but sometimes oversell. The best approach is to pick the structural clarity of the larger papers and the emotional honesty of the smaller ones. One specific edge case I dealt with involved a stepfather whom the children didn't feel close to. The family couldn't agree on whether to include him prominently in the obituary. We solved it by listing him in the factual survivor section without narrative detail, then focusing the personal paragraphs on the biological parents and the people who were actually central to his life. It wasn't elegant but it was fair and it published without further conflict. If you're working with The Gift Of Remembrance Grove or a similar venue, confirm early whether they have a preferred obituary format or word limit. Some memorial gardens and religious organizations coordinate with the funeral home and the newspaper simultaneously, and miscommunication between those three parties can delay publication by days. I've seen it happen. A quick phone call to the grove's administrative office at the start of the process saves a lot of frustration later.
The Things Nobody Talks About
Obituaries are permanent records now. They get archived, shared on social media, quoted in later articles, sometimes even used in genealogy research. That means the language you choose stays attached to the person indefinitely. I've watched families regret words like "beloved" used seventeen times in a single piece or euphemisms that confused rather than comforted. Be specific. Say "he died of cancer" instead of "he passed after a long illness." It's cleaner and more honest, and it helps people who are going through the same thing feel less alone. The financial side is worth noting too. Many newspapers charge $150 to $400 for a standard obituary, and fees go up for longer pieces or placement in both print and online editions. Some communities have free options through volunteer-run grief support groups or religious organizations. If cost is a concern, ask. It doesn't hurt, and many publications will adjust format to fit a budget without removing substantive content. After the Bowersox obituary ran, I got an email from someone who said they'd known him thirty years and never heard half the stories included in it. That's the point. An obituary isn't just a notice of death. It's the last chance to make sure the right things survive.
