Reading Between the Lines

On a classroom screen, I projected words in big, black letters: “How to Write an Obituary.”

I launched into the day’s lecture with firm words for these students, because this stuff matters: “Listen carefully, ladies and gentlemen. Because these are the most important stories you may ever write. And they will rarely land you on the front page of the morning paper.”

***

“There’s nothing morbid about a good obituary because a good obit is about life, not death.” — a New York Times editor.

And so I always took the job seriously when I sat at the keyboard to tap out a life story. But with only a one-column photo and a few paragraphs of text, I always fell short. I could never tell the whole story.

Entire chapters of a life were missing:
the tears and the yawns and
the snorting laughter and
the famous apple pie and
the time he tripped while escorting his bride up the aisle.

I type: “Mr. Wilson was a life member of the American Legion.” And I hope the reader will grope into unwritten spaces to meet a boy-soldier who became a man while at war.

I type: “Mrs. Peterson was survived by two sons and was preceded in death by an infant daughter.” But in the word-void, we won’t know she lost her faith at the cribside rail. And we won’t know if she ever regained it.

I type: “Melva loved to garden, do crossword puzzles and knit in her free time.” And I wonder if they’d care to know that she died alone.

We don’t have adequate space to tell how the man who died of a brain tumor found faith in God because of it. Or about the baby whose Earth-story ended on the first page of Chapter One.

But we send these half-written stories to print because it’s all we’ve got. And they roll over the presses, and reach front doorsteps before morning’s first light. The rest of us pour a cup of coffee and grab the paper. We turn to the inside pages to find stories of death, stories of life.

And that’s when the truth of our own mortality starts gnawing at our insides.

Because when we read the obituaries, we’re faced with the truth: We’re all going to die.

***

I once had to leave family Christmas early because I’d been assigned to the obit desk that day.

Death has a way of showing up on its own timetable, and someone had to stand by the fax machine to wait for the death notices.

I still remember their stories: A teenager who died in a car accident. A young woman, just married, who died from cancer. An old woman who died in her sleep at the nursing home a few days after turning 92.

I was 21 at the time — about the age my college journalism students are now. Sixteen years later, I’m flashing Power Point slides on the screen about how we have a duty to record the lives of strangers.

But when I advance to the next screen, it gets personal.