cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

The first funeral I ever attended was one of those wacky affaires enlivened by jaw-dropping moments when the assembled throng could not believe the Dear Departed’s Best Beloved had chosen something so totally opposite of anything the Dear Departed would have favored while above ground. I had no idea what was happening or what to do next. Mercifully, my uncle’s partner came to the rescue. He had been raised by his grandmother, a Victorian lady of high principles who was an avid newspaper reader. Every day she scanned the obituaries column to find the most promising funerals to attend, hoping to find dynamic family interactions. After years of attending funerals under her tutelage, my uncle’s partner knew very well just how strongly life can pulse even at graveside. He also left me with a residual fascination for obituaries. If I find the obituary page in a newspaper, I will read it – because there’s almost always unexpected history in a person’s life. Whether it’s a celebrity or ...

Call me a morbid historian, but I have always been interested in old cemeteries---there's a civil war cemetery close by and I stopped one day when city docents were hosting tours. The group had put together a booklet with the actual obituaries on some 25 of people who were buried there. This interesting booklet recorded the lives of the pioneers and soldiers and everyday folk who lived outside of San Fransisco in the late 1800's. As one reads, it is easy to feel the joys and the sorrow the successes and failures, the dreams and tragedies of people we will never know. Newspaper obituaries of the time were surprisingly uncensored in their accounts of the worth of the person, the way they died and how they were grieved---or not. There was no such thing as political correctness, that's for sure. These obituaries are preachy, prejudiced, judgmental, sentimental, and heartfelt. Deaths were described in graphic detail as were the personal habits and personalities of the recently ...