News Of The Dearly Departed

I'm a newspaper reader. The daily newspaper is like water to me in that if I don't have it every day I am exceedingly thirsty for it. So I read at least one each day. That would be all of the paper, including the obituary column. Yep! I am fascinated with those death notices, and after checking to see if anyone familiar is gone I often read through, as much as 30 minutes a day, the bios of the departed. There's a lot to learn and to feel when one reads about the lives of those who have lost there human form forever.

One thing I learn when reading the biographies of the deceased is that human life is quite broad in variety scope and that we have lives as individual as our fingerprints. I often wonder why the deceased embraced the hobbies or work he or she did in life. Why, for example, did a fellow spend an entire life devoted to plotting the movement of a particular bird?  Or what made the lovely lady pictured  in her bio while still young to "show her at her best", travel the world do much and live in so many places? Why did she not settle in one?

The nicest thing about reading an obituary is that only positive and endearing thoughts and news are within. The personal references, the expressed affection from those who remember the deceased, the funny or happy moment from the deceased's life are all important private human moments of lives that are shared in the obit.  There is never criticism, negativity or bad expression in any obituary bio How ironic that in death we find the calmness and niceness we never seem to find while alive. Those obituaries are an unintended reminder to behave better toward each other. I find solace in reading about the best of the lives of the departed.  I share their life adventure and appreciate the value of their life. Even though  a stranger to me I feel a bond reading about them. I often mutter, "Gee, what a nice person. Sorry I never met him/her."

Yes, obituaries give me a kind of hope for the future. Since so many good humans once existed, why not many more now and in the future. Maybe a death notice is not just to announce to family and friends a passing and funeral. Perhaps it is a statement that humans aren't so bad after all.  I doubt there is any written statement about us that is more personal, revealing and and open as what is in an obituary notice. Is there anything more open than the announcement of a death? Too, any obit is a statement that the deceased really mattered to some individual and to the world at large. The greatest conviction in life is to have been loved.  The death notice reaffirms that.

Death ends a life, not a relationship. The daily death column reminds us of that.