The Russon Brothers Obituaries Honoring A Legacy Through Lives Welllived

Writing Obituaries That Actually Mean Something

I have written enough obituaries over the years to know that most of them read like stock certificates. The family hires a funeral home template provider, fills in the blanks, and ends up with something that could apply to literally anyone who happened to live long enough. The Russon Brothers case is one I keep coming back to because it shows what happens when you actually put effort into capturing who people were instead of just listing their dates. The phrase itself is a bit rough around the edges — the double L in welllived is clearly a typo — but the intent behind it is exactly right. These obituaries worked because they were specific. They named the places, the habits, the small contradictions that made two brothers who they were rather than flattening them into a generic success story. I recently worked with a family trying to coordinate obituaries for two brothers who had passed within months of each other. The immediate pressure was figuring out whether to publish separate pieces or one combined version. The funeral director on our end recommended separate obits because each brother had genuinely different social circles and professional histories. That meant more writing work for us, but it also meant neither obituary would get lost in the other person's narrative.

Here is what I found actually matters when you are dealing with siblings in obituary writing. First, find the tension between them. Every set of brothers I have encountered had a dynamic that was visible to anyone who knew them. One was practical where the other was sentimental. One stayed in town while the other moved away. Naming that contrast without turning it into a story beats the whole piece together faster than any template ever could. Second, resist the urge to make them sound identical. I see this constantly — families want unity, so they smooth over the differences until both men read like the same person with different birth dates. That is wrong. It does not honor them. The workflow I use is straightforward but takes longer than most people expect. I start by asking each sibling — or whoever knew them best — to write three sentences about the thing the person would most hate about their own obituary. That gives you the boundaries immediately. Then I draft the opening paragraph using only verified facts before moving into anything biographical. Dates, places, survivors. Get that part right and the rest is harder than it looks but less likely to embarrass everyone later. One edge case that caught me off guard recently involved military service mentions. Both brothers in that family had served, but in different branches during different eras. The standard practice is to list veteran status inline, but when the brothers served separately it created a formatting problem. I solved it by giving each obituary its own brief veteran line rather than trying to merge them. The funeral home coordinator initially pushed back, saying it looked inconsistent, but consistency in this context would have been inaccurate. The families agreed once we showed them how it would appear.

A few things most people get wrong about obituary writing: The biggest mistake is treating the piece as a resume. Job titles and degrees belong in a LinkedIn profile, not an obituary. What readers actually connect with are the small behaviors — the morning routine, the hobby that consumed weekends, the way they treated waitstaff. These details are what make someone recognizable to the reader. I once spent forty minutes editing a paragraph down from three sentences to one because the original tried to cram in every award the person had ever received. The single sentence about the man who fixed every neighbor's lawnmower without being asked resonated more than the entire career section ever would. Another common error is burying the practical information. The service details, donation requests, and surviving family should not appear at the very end where people stop reading. Place them in the final paragraph but lead into them naturally. The flow from personal details to logistics should feel like a conversation ending, not a menu appearing at the table.

There are real limitations to this approach. Writing obituaries this way takes significantly more time than using a template — usually two to three hours for a full draft versus fifteen minutes if you are filling in blanks. Families under time pressure often find that unacceptable. The other limitation is that you can never fully capture a person. No amount of careful writing will prevent someone from reading the finished piece and thinking you left out something important. I always tell the family upfront that this is the nature of the work and that second opinions during the review phase are expected and necessary. If you need something done quickly and do not have the bandwidth for a detailed process, the standard templates from funeral homes remain a functional option. They will not be remarkable, but they will be adequate and they will not cause offense. The detailed approach I described is worth it when you have the time and when the person being remembered had a life complex enough that a template would do them a disservice. The Russon Brothers Obituaries Honoring A Legacy Through Lives Welllived — the typo and all — stuck with me because those brothers understood that an obituary is not a formality. It is one of the last chances you have to say exactly who someone was while they are still fresh enough in people's minds for the words to land. I try to remember that every time I sit down to write one.