Writing Obituaries That Actually Work
Most people treat obituaries like they are writing a tax form. Fill in the blanks, list the survivors, submit and forget it. That approach works for the funeral home's paperwork requirements, but it fails completely at what the obituary is supposed to do: preserve something true about the person who died. Pisarski Funeral Home handles this with a level of care that most families don't expect going in, and the process there has some specific nuances you should know about before you start writing. I learned the hard way that an obituary written on pure autopilot produces something completely forgettable within three days. The first time I dealt with this was for my grandfather, and I literally copy-pasted the standard template the funeral home had offered. It read like a public record: born here, married there, survived by five grandchildren. Nobody talked about it after the service. Three months later, my grandmother pulled me aside and said she still hadn't read it because it sounded like a stranger's document. That stung more than I can say, and I started paying attention to how Pisarski approaches this differently. At Pisarski, the obituary process begins with an interview rather than a form. The staff sits down with the family and asks specific questions that aren't on any checklist: What did this person actually do with their hands on a Tuesday? What was their actual voice like in a room? What's a story only three people alive would know? That interview format is where the difference comes from. Most funeral homes operate on a fill-in-the-blank model because it's faster. Pisarski takes longer upfront but produces results that family members actually keep reading.
The practical result of this approach is that the obituary captures behavioral truth instead of biographical data. Behavioral truth means describing someone by how they moved through the world rather than just the dates and locations of their life events. A standard obituary says someone was a teacher for forty years. An obituary built on behavioral truth says they stayed late every Friday to help the kids who couldn't afford field trip fees and kept a drawer full of granola bars in their desk. One of those sentences tells you a fact. The other tells you who the person actually was. Here is where people run into problems. Pisarski has a submission process that requires certain information to be typed directly into their system, and the staff will guide you through it, but you need to come prepared with specific details. Before your interview or your call, write down five anecdotes that are too small for a regular obituary but too important to leave out. Not big milestones. Small moments. The time someone burned toast every single Sunday morning. The way someone always hummed off-key in the grocery store. These details are what make an obituary function as a living document instead of a newspaper filler. I have a specific edge case that shows why this matters. A client came to Pisarski with a father who had been estranged from two of his three children for twelve years. The family didn't know how to handle that in an obituary. Standard practice would have been to either mention the estrangement awkwardly or omit those children entirely, both of which create worse problems later. The Pisarski staff handled it by focusing on the father's actual life and career accomplishments in the main body, then listing all children in the survivor section without any editorial framing. They allowed space for the family to add a separate personal note if they chose to. That separation between the narrative and the survivor list gave everyone breathing room. It wasn't perfect, but it was honest and it didn't force anyone into a narrative they weren't ready for.
There are some things Pisarski does that will surprise you if you aren't expecting them. First, they allow photo submissions in formats that most funeral homes reject. Most require high-resolution JPEGs with specific naming conventions, but Pisarski's team will work with whatever you have, including older scanned photographs, as long as the content is decent. They scan and digitize old photos themselves if the quality is too poor. This matters more than you might think because a grainy photo of a person holding a fishing rod from 1974 carries more emotional weight than a polished headshot from a passport. Second, Pisarski will let you publish the obituary online before the funeral service if the family wants that option, and they manage the timing themselves. Some funeral homes tie online publication to the service date automatically, which creates a problem when the service gets postponed or moved. Pisarski's system separates the publication date from the service date, giving families actual control over when the obituary goes live. This seems minor until you are dealing with it in real time and realize how many funeral homes get this wrong. The counter-intuitive part that nobody tells you is that less information in the obituary often produces a stronger result. Pisarski staff have told me directly that they see families include three extra pages of information because they feel obligated to document everything. What actually resonates with readers is usually two or three paragraphs maximum. People skim obituaries. They remember the one specific detail that made them feel like they knew the person. Everything else is background noise that dilutes the impact.
Get the Full Details
Another nuance that beginners miss is the difference between a newspaper obituary and a Pisarski-hosted online memorial page. These are two separate things with different audiences and different functions. The newspaper version has strict word limits and costs money per line or per word. Pisarski's online memorial page has no hard limit and serves as the permanent archive. I recommend using the newspaper version for the basic facts and the online page for the full story. Most families conflate the two and try to cram everything into one space, which means neither version works well. There are limitations you should understand. Pisarski operates primarily in the local market, and if you are arranging services from out of state, you will be dealing with phone and email rather than in-person consultations. The quality remains consistent, but the remote communication adds friction, especially when you are trying to make decisions while grieving. Another limitation is that Pisarski, like most funeral homes, will not write the obituary for you from scratch without family input. They provide the framework and guidance, but you have to supply the content. Some families expect the staff to produce the final text independently, and that expectation doesn't match how the process actually works. If Pisarski isn't an option for your situation, the alternatives are limited but exist. Local independent funeral homes in the area tend to offer similar interview-based approaches, though not always with the same consistency. Online obituary platforms like Legacy.com allow you to write and publish directly, but you lose the guidance and editorial support that makes the Pisarski process effective. DIY obituaries written without professional input typically end up being either too clinical or too scattered because families don't know how to filter their material.
The bottom line is that honoring a life story through an obituary requires actual effort and specific input from people who knew the deceased. The Pisarski process is designed to make that effort productive rather than overwhelming. Come prepared with small stories, not just dates. Keep the published text tight. Use the online memorial page for the full picture. Don't try to fit everything into the newspaper version. The people reading this obituary ten years from now will remember the granola bars, not the birth date.
