5. What, if anything, do you find inspirational about the person’s story?
6. Now, read the obituary as a writer. What do you admire about the way this piece was written? What is your favorite line, and why?
Going Further
Now, it’s your turn: Write an obituary for someone — perhaps someone you knew personally, a historical figure you are learning about in school, a character from a novel you are reading or anyone else whose life story you’d like to tell.
1. First, you’ll need to do research. You might read newspaper articles or biographies, watch or listen to interviews featuring your subject, or talk with the person’s family members or friends.
(If you’re speaking with someone whose loved one has recently died, remember to approach the conversation with compassion. When Neil Vigdor, a Times reporter, calls someone who has lost a family member or a friend, he starts by saying, “I’m deeply sorry to be reaching out under these circumstances.” Then he asks to hear more about the person who died.)
2. Next, you’ll need to identify the most basic facts of the person’s life and death. Here is part of a tip sheet from The Times’s Obituaries desk on the essential information every obituary should include:
Date of death
Place of death
Age at death
Cause of death
Full birth name, and place and date of birth
Education
Military service
Marriages, to whom and when; and divorces, if there are any.
Names of parents, siblings, spouse or companion and children. Numbers of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The more biographical background the obituary can give, the better. For example, how did they start their careers? Details like education and military service should be given when relevant or interesting. If possible, give the names and occupations of the subject’s parents, as well as his or her place and date of birth.
But you don’t want your obituary to just be a list of dry facts. Add what journalists call “color.” What made this person’s life interesting? In “How to Write an Obituary,” Malia Wollan interviews Victoria Chang, a poet who wrote obituary poems after her mother died, and gives examples of these kinds of details:
“Everyone is special and quirky, and I think the best obituaries capture the essence of those qualities about each of us,” Chang says. What things did she collect? What did she love to eat? What brought her joy?
3. Finally, it’s time to write. The format of an obituary is often uniform. Ms. Wollan describes it this way:
An obituary tends to have three distinct parts: the beginning (name, age, date of death, cause of death [if possible to include], work, education); the middle (anecdotes that celebrate the person’s life); and the end (so-and-so is survived by, which Chang calls “a very efficient way of saying who’s grieving.”)
Also, consider the tone you want your obituary to have. Ms. Wollan continues:
An obituary is for the living, but you should consider the sensibilities of the deceased. How would the person want to be remembered? “Imagine what they would write about themselves,” Chang says. It’s OK to be funny. “There’s a lot of humor and oddity, strange tensions and funny stuff about people and the things they do together,” Chang says.
And if you want to get creative, instead of writing a traditional obituary, make a slide show of the person’s life with photos and text, put together a mixed media collage or write an obituary poem, as Ms. Chang did for her mother. Share what you make with your class.
If you want to learn more about obituaries in The New York Times, the documentary “Obit” is available on Amazon Prime. You can also listen to this interview on NPR with two obituary writers from The New York Times.
