You read what?!
I’m outing myself as a regular obituary reader. It started years ago when keeping an eye out for the obituary of one of my favorite writers, May Sarton. (She was of “an age.”) Finally discovered her obit when just about to move from LA to Chapel Hill, NC, and have been hooked on obituaries ever since.
Why, you ask? That’s a great question. For starters, I’m curious. I’m curious about other peoples’ lives which probably reflects my early childhood attraction to reading as many biographies as I could. (Gulp, gulp, gulp.) I guess we all look for guidance about how to live our lives – mine came through biographies.
But…but…obits?? Kind of morbid? No, not really. Talk about a particular roadmap that increasingly gave me permission to be, of all people, myself. I love the obituaries for folks who’ve been in intentional relationship with the world on a small but caring scale. Excuse me?? You know, the one-on-one simple do-gooder. Models kindness. Smiles wherever they go. Helps rescue lost animals. What seems like really small stuff…
Wait, wait, what about all the BIG stuff that folks accomplish? The bigger the better; isn’t that way more important? Ahem…. Can we judge the presence of sheer ALIVENESS by how small or big something is? Can we gauge the light someone has shed in the universe by the scale of their accomplishments? My obituary teachers continue to show me that our presence in the world, no matter what the scale, is like a pebble thrown into a pond. Small acts, big acts, they all make ripples. Rippling and rippling, well beyond any impact we could have ever imagined.
Feel free share with others.
I too grew up reading biographies, as well as autobiographies and diaries. I've always been more interested in what gave an artist the inspiration to create rather than exactly what they created. I'm fascinated by the act of creation, the flow versus the balanced effort necessary to both create and get that creation out into the world.
Not sure if you ever heard of this but Carl Reiner wrote and produced a movie when he was 93. It was called If I'm Not in the Obits, I Eat Breakfast. It's about people in their 90s and 100s still alive, creating, and happy doing what they love to do. I watched it with my folks before their deaths at 85 each. They weren't happy or healthy, instead dragged down by personal/family problems that demanded more and more internal territory as they aged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_mfb0jcbXI
Last night I was catching up on a show called CHASING LIFE that had two seasons in 2014-15. In the second season the star interacts with a cancer patient in an infusion room. This patient is reading the obituaries. She talks about how much more there is to do in life than work... how work is usually a one-liner while the other more important parts of life are what people really value about being alive.
On a movie about Mike Wallace, during an interview with Bette Davis on 60 Minutes which I'm adding after this paragraph, Bette says that work is the most lasting and important relationship in one's life. Of course, Bette also wanted on her tombstone, SHE DID IT THE HARD WAY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g857qqY0D90
I remember a Rabbi once saying during the High Holy Day services, "I talk to lots of priests, clergy, and religious leaders, all who attend the dying. They all agree that no one ever says I wish I worked more. But most say they either wish they had spent more time with loved ones, or learning about who they really are." I've taken that to heart. I feel if my ancestors worked so hard for me to have a life, I didn't want to unconsciously keep repeating a pattern I wasn't even familiar with versus what other patterns were available. It took me till my 60s to really see the patterns.