Good Obituaries Are About Life, Not About Death

After reading a well-written obituary, one should feel that she or he may have known, or would like to have known, the deceased. I have been collecting obituaries for over 10 years and, it's true, many of the people I read about feel like "old friends," people I would have liked to have known. What the obituaries that I collect have in common is called the "defining line." Carolyn Gilbert, founder of the annual Great Obituary Writers' Conference and editor of www.ObitPage.com, describes the defining line as "an insight into the heart and soul of a life." "When the defining line is missing the result is mediocrity, a long list of survivors but not much in the way of color. This is the common pitfall of most obituaries," says Gilbert. I think you'll agree that the 22 handpicked obituaries that I culled from the two 4" binders that contain the obits I've collected cross a spectrum of "color." (FYI: Letters "I", "Q", "U", and "X" are absent.) Let me know what you think in the 'comments' section.