Writing Obituaries That Actually Work
I've been reading and occasionally contributing to the Bellingham Herald's obituary section for over a decade. It's a strange intersection of journalism, grief, and family politics that most people never see the back end of. The obits are small — typically 200 to 600 words — but they carry a lot of weight for the people who read them. I've watched families tear apart over what to include and what to leave out. I've also seen really well-written ones that managed to capture someone accurately without turning into a resume or a eulogy dressed up as news. Here's the practical side of it. When you're writing an obituary for a local paper like the Bellingham Herald, you're not just listing facts. You're making a series of decisions about what story gets told about someone after they're gone. Most families don't realize how much editorial judgment goes into even a "standard" obit. The newspaper will often provide a template, but the template is where things start going wrong. I once had a situation where a daughter wanted her father's 40-year career at a local manufacturing plant listed job title by job title. That would have taken up about 300 words on its own. We cut it down to one sentence mentioning the company and the timeframe, then used the remaining space to describe what he actually did there — he trained younger workers, showed up early to fix equipment before shifts started, kept a toolbox in his truck for neighbors who asked for help. That's the version people remembered him by. The title alone doesn't do that.
The real problem most people run into is the tension between completeness and readability. Families want everything included. The editor wants something you can finish in three minutes while standing in a grocery aisle. The sweet spot is usually around 350 words for a standard life notice. Anything longer gets bumped to a paid tribute section or edited down aggressively, which creates resentment on both sides.
What Actually Makes an Obituary Remembered
There's a common misconception that obituaries are just announcements. They're not. They're the first draft of how someone will be remembered in their own community. The Bellingham Herald has a relatively tight-knit readership compared to bigger papers, which means the people reading the obit often knew the person personally or knew someone who did. That changes what lands and what falls flat. I learned this the hard way with a submission for a woman in her seventies. The family sent me a draft that opened with her birth date, listed all five of her children with their spouses and cities, named every grandchild, listed her employment history chronologically, and ended with surviving siblings and predeceased relatives. It was accurate. It was also completely unreadable as a narrative. Someone who didn't know her would finish it and have no idea who she was. The fix was simple but counterintuitive: I moved the biographical data to the bottom in a compact survivors paragraph and opened with three specific moments from her life — her volunteer work at the Whatcom Conservation District, the annual pie contest she entered for twenty years without ever winning, and the fact that she kept a deck chair on her porch for anyone who needed to sit and talk. That version ran at 280 words. The family initially pushed back. Two weeks later the daughter wrote in saying three people who'd barely spoken in years reached out because of it.
Get the Full Details
Practical Guidelines That Actually Help
Start with the lead sentence. This is the single most important sentence in the entire piece. It should tell you something specific about the person that wouldn't apply to anyone else. "John Smith died at age 72" is functional but empty. "John Smith, who taught woodworking at Whatcom Community College for thirty-two years and built cabinets for half the houses on Meridian Street, died Tuesday" gives you a person. Use the inverted pyramid sparingly. Journalists are trained to put the most important information first, then funnel down to details. In obituaries this often produces a cold opening that reads like a police blotter. The person you're writing about isn't breaking news. Lead with something human, then layer in the essential facts — date of death, age, place, cause if the family is comfortable sharing it — within the first two paragraphs. Get the survivors right and keep it tight. This is where families fight. List the immediate family in order: spouse, children, grandchildren, parents if applicable. If there are step-relatives, adopted children, or complicated dynamics, the family needs to decide before you write it. The paper won't arbitrate. I've seen obituaries sit in limbo for four days because two siblings couldn't agree on whether an estranged brother's name should appear. Draft the paragraph, send it to everyone, set a deadline of twenty-four hours for changes, and move forward after that.
Include service details but don't let them dominate. Funeral home, date, time, location — these belong at the end. They're reference information, not the story. I've seen pieces where the service details took up more space than anything about the person. That's backwards.
Common Pitfalls I See Repeatedly
The biggest mistake is writing a CV. Career achievements matter, but listing every position held, every certification earned, every committee served on turns an obituary into a resume. Pick the two or three professional highlights that actually define who the person was and move on. The second mistake is excessive positivity. Real people have complexity. A good obituary doesn't need to expose private failures, but it also doesn't need to pretend someone was perfect. If the person was known for being stubborn, that's fine to note. If they were generous to a fault, say so. Authenticity resonates with readers who knew the person. Generic praise reads like advertising. A third issue is word count inflation. Papers charge by the line or by the thousand words in many markets, and the Bellingham Herald is no exception. Families who want extensive tributes often opt for a separate memorial piece rather than stuffing it into the obit. This keeps the obit readable and gives the family a larger canvas if they really want it. It also avoids the awkward situation where the editor cuts sections late in the process and the family blames the paper for "changing" their loved one's story.
When the Standard Approach Falls Apart
Not every death fits a neat template. Suicides, overdoses, accidents, and cases where the cause of death is contested create real problems. The paper's policy is generally to state the cause if the family provides it and if it's a matter of public record. But families often don't know the policy until after they've submitted a draft. I've had to walk people through the decision of whether to mention a specific cause or just say "died unexpectedly" or "after a brief illness." There's no universal answer. It depends on the family's comfort level, the newspaper's standards, and whether the death is already public knowledge in the community. Another edge case is the non-traditional family structure. Blended families, chosen family, long-term partners who weren't married — the standard survivors paragraph assumes a certain format. I've worked with families who had seven people who called themselves children, none of whom were related by blood. The obituary reflected that accurately because the family decided on the language together. But it required a conversation that wouldn't have happened with a template-driven approach.
The Actual Workflow
Here's what the process looks like in practice. You get a death notification, usually from the funeral home or a family member. You confirm the essential facts — full name, age, date of death, city of residence. You ask the family for a draft or gather information through an interview. Most families will send something they've written themselves, which is fine but almost always needs editing. You reshape it according to the guidelines above, check names and dates against public records when possible, verify the service information with the funeral home directly rather than relying on the family's wording, and submit it for the editor's review. Turnaround is typically twenty-four to forty-eight hours for standard pieces. Paid memorials can take longer because they bypass the standard editing process. The Bellingham Herald operates on a daily schedule, so timing matters less than it does in weekly publications, but there's still a cutoff. Information submitted after the afternoon deadline usually runs the next day. Urgent corrections or additions can sometimes be accommodated with a call to the news desk, but last-minute changes are always stressful for everyone involved. The people who write good obituaries understand that they're doing something genuinely important. Not in a grand way. In a quiet one. A well-written death notice helps a community process loss, connects people who might not otherwise remember someone, and creates a permanent record that outlasts fading group chats and half-remembered stories. It's not literary journalism. It doesn't need to be. It just needs to be true.
