Writing Your Own Obituary?

You probably saw, as I did, the obituary of Seattle author Jane Catharine Lotter, who died of cancer on July 18 at the age of 60.  When her obituary was published on July 28 in the Seattle Times, it quickly went viral, presumably because it was so eloquent, witty, wise and moving, and because she wrote it herself.

 Jane had written a weekly humor column called “Jane Explains” as well as a comic novel “The Bette Davis Club”.  A number of journalists and bloggers discussed Jane’s unusual obituary, most of them quoting the first sentence: “One of the few advantages of dying from Grade 3, Stage IIIC endometrial cancer…is that you have time to write your own obituary.”

I printed out and saved it, because I’ve always intended to write my own obituary, (my kids asked me to—I guess so THEY wouldn’t have to do it) and since I’m now 72, that’s on my “To Do Sometime” list.  But I never, until now, considered writing it in the first person, like a letter.

Here is my favorite part of Jane’s obit, near the end: 

“Bobby M., I love you up to the sky.  Thank you for all the laughter and the love and for standing by me at the end.  Tessa and Riley, I love you so much, and I’m so proud of you.  I wish you such good things.  May you, every day, connect with the brilliance of your own spirit.  And may you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path.

“I believe we are each of us connected to every person and everything on this Earth, that we are in fact one divine organism having an infinite spiritual existence.  Of course, we may not always comprehend that.  And really, that’s a discussion for another time.  So let’s cut to the chase.

“I was given the gift of life, and now I have to give it back.  This is hard. But I was a lucky woman, who led a lucky existence, and for this I am grateful.  I first got sick in January 2010.  When the cancer recurred last year and was terminal, I decided to be joyful about having had a full life, rather than sad about having to die.  Amazingly, this outlook worked for me.  (Well, you know, most of the time.) Meditation and the study of Buddhist philosophy also helped me accept what I could not change. At any rate, I am at peace.  And on that upbeat note, I take my mortal leave of this rollicking, revolving world—this sun, that moon, that walk around Green Lake, that stroll through the Pike Place Market, the memory of a child’s hand in mine.”

No wonder that obituary went viral, I thought, Jane Catherine Lotter was a brilliant writer. 

Then, yesterday, I was reading old newspapers because I had been out of the country during July, and in the weekly “Grafton News”, published in my tiny New England village, I found another obituary written in the first person—this one by a  nurse named Laura Jean Bassett Toomey Whiting, who also died of cancer at age 60 and wrote an obituary that was as eloquent and moving as Jane Lotter’s.  (The obit was also printed in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.)  To my amazement, Laura died on July 19-- one day after Jane Lotter-- so her obit couldn’t have been inspired by Jane’s, as I first assumed. Both the obituaries were published in late July.

Unlike Jane, Laura Whiting did not say she was at peace with dying: 

“It is with great sadness that I leave you…Although my cancer is incompatible with life, I am not prepared or ready to go. There is still so much I want to do.  I want to grow old with my best friend and husband, Larry…I want to watch my children and grandchildren grow up…But I am so happy to have lived to help plan my daughter’s wedding on July 20, 2013 [the day after Laura died—and they did go through with it.] I am amazed that my desire to participate in this wonderful celebration somehow gave me the strength to do so.”

Laura writes that, in 1970, when she was in nursing school, she contracted  Hodgkin’s Disease but was cured.

“Being cured of cancer also allowed me my greatest achievement:  to have five beautiful, wonderful and healthy children.”

At the end, having  recounted her life, Laura says: “I am a 43-year survivor of cancer, not a victim.  Despite the fact that I again have cancer, my long survival is miraculous.  Cancer certainly challenges a person, their family and their friends…but it also gives us a chance to think about what is important…It allows you to say ‘I love you’ to a wider circle of friends, and to say ‘I love you’ more often to family.  Many friends and family have gone to great effort to gather to celebrate life with me…What a gift!...Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.  Thank you for those moments, those gifts.  I love you.

“I have chosen to donate my body to the University of Massachusetts Medical School in recognition of the importance of studying the human body in the education of medical students, with the expectation that they will use what they learn from me to help relieve human suffering.”

Reading Laura’s obituary inspired many Massachusetts readers who did not know her to sign into her on-line guest book, saying what a remarkable woman she must have been.  And here is a comment from Joyce Leoleis, who did know her:

“I am lucky to be one of the Memorial Hospital screeners who got to see and enjoy Laura almost every day... Her incredible approach to life, both before and during her illness, will always be an inspiration to us all. A wise woman once told me that a mother’s job when her children are young is to teach them how to live. When they are older, a mother’s job is to teach her children how to die. Laura did both with a quiet dignity and grace that will never be forgotten.”

I’ve added Laura’s obituary to my file of inspiration for the day when I sit down to write my own obituary—a task I have to stop putting off.

Why I’m Going to Miss Newspapers

I’ve said it before:  my favorite time is when I sit down in the morning with my first cup of coffee and start to read the three newspapers that I devour every day.

One reason this is such a guilty pleasure is the contrast to my first job, in public relations at Lever Brothers in New York, when I had to walk into an empty office at 8 a.m. carrying five newspapers, then read and summarize all the business news of interest to the company’s executives, who would get a mimeographed newsletter from me when they drifted in around 10 a.m.  Now, of course, all executives can get their own news summary on their I-phones right in the taxi or commuter train on the way to work.

The paper that I read first with my coffee is the local paper—the Worcester (MA) Telegram & Gazette.  I need the comfortable perspective of the T&G before I tackle the increasingly depressing first page of The New York Times.

 The T&G on Monday, March 11, for example, devoted much of the front page to Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade-- photos and the title “Smilin’ Skies” with two subtitles “Sun Shines on St. Pat’s Parade” and “One band finds itself out of step.” Inside on page three was a feel-good story and photo about how the library in Hardwick is sponsoring a seed exchange, lending seeds as well as books to its patrons, who are expected to bring seeds back from their crop for the next year’s sowing.  That’s the kind of uplifting local story that I like.

While The New York Times likes to lead with photos of mass graves and starving refugee children, the T& G has featured page-one photos of firemen rescuing a cat from a telephone pole.  When I’ve finished the T&G and checked to see if anyone I know has died or been arrested, I go through The New York Times methodically, section by section.  Often the obituaries of fascinating people I’d never heard of are my favorite part.

 I need a second cup of coffee before I tackle The Times, and when I’m through, I go about my chores. But sometime during the day I go out and track down a copy of the New York Post, which is famous for its lurid headlines like “Headless Body in Topless Bar” (that one was voted a readers favorite.  Here are some more below.) 

 People often ask me “Why on earth would YOU read the Post every day?” (Meaning—since I’m an educated professional with presumably better taste.)  But I reply truthfully that I need my daily gossip fix, and often I find my New York friends and acquaintances and their misadventures chronicled on Page Six.  Where else but in the Post would I find articles like the one last Monday about: “Why does everyone hate Anne Hathaway?” 

 My kids and their friends get all their news on line.  And I understand and respect their reasons why I shouldn’t read the print version: it kills trees, it gets your hands and furniture dirty, and by the time the paper appears in the driveway at 6:30 a.m. (usually in a plastic bag landing in the snow), it’s already out of date.

But I love handling the newspapers; the smell of the ink that smudges my hands.  I love being able to tag with post-it notes and later cut out articles I think would be of interest to my kids.  I regularly send them clippings, which I suspect they never read (but if I forward the article by e-mail I sometimes get a comment back.)

Today we get breaking news via internet the instant it happens—and we also get all the confusion and fear and wrong information gleaned by bystanders.  Think about the Newtown massacre and how many wrong “facts” were reported until, by the afternoon, the terrible truth was pinned down and rendered into print for the next day’s papers.

I graduated with a master’s degree from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and I realize the serious dangers of broadcasting breaking news while it’s still rumor. I understand how easy it would be to cause mass hysteria , serious injury and even death using no more than your Twitter or Facebook account.   Look what Orson Welles did with “War of the Worlds” on the radio in 1938, before the days of television.

The ability of bystanders to report the news on line is also a good thing—it can uncover and document police abuse, domestic abuse, all kinds of criminal acts. But I still prefer my news on paper, evaluated and fact-checked by the reporters of the Great Gray Lady presenting “all the news that’s fit to print.” 

I know we’re approaching the end of the road for print media. Newsweek is gone, except for on-line. The Boston Phoenix just folded after 47 years. The New York Times, suffering financially like everyone else, is trying to find someone to buy the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. One day soon there won’t be any more news delivery people or any more newspapers landing in the snowdrift at the end of our driveway.  And millions of trees will have been saved.

When I was born on Feb. 4, 1941, my parents saved the entire Milwaukee Journal: (“Score Hurt as Big Locomotive Explodes in Streets of Denver”.)  In September of 1970 I cut our wedding announcement out of The New York Times and put it in an album. Like everyone else, I saved the paper from Nov. 23, 1963, about Kennedy’s assassination.  That was the first time the nation pulled together to mourn a tragedy as it was taking place on television, but, still in grad school, I didn’t have access to a television, but stood over the teletype machine in Columbia J School’s newsroom as crumbs of information were typed out at an agonizingly slow pace.

When all the newspapers are gone and news comes beeping through our phones and computers all day long, my first cup of coffee in the morning won’t taste the same.  And as one friend asked, what are we going to use to pack up the china and line the birdcage?