When you finally sit down with a blank screen or a notepad after a loss, staring at the blinking cursor can feel cruel. How are you supposed to condense sixty, eighty, or ninety years of laughter, stubbornness, heartbreak, and everyday routines into a few short paragraphs for the local paper?
Most obituaries read like corporate résumés: born, worked, retired, died. But your person wasn’t a bullet point. They had a distinct voice, a favorite coffee mug, a way of laughing that filled a room, and a specific footprint on the people who loved them.
Let’s step away from the sterile templates for a minute. Pull up a chair, and let’s talk about how to write something that actually sounds like the person you are missing.
An obituary shouldn’t read like an official notice written by an insurance company. It should be a snapshot of a real human being. When you start writing, don’t worry about sounding overly formal or poetic. Write the way you talk about them when you’re sitting around the kitchen table sharing memories. If they hated dressing up, you don’t need to paint them as a saint in a three-piece suit. If they loved working in the dirt, fixing old lawnmowers, or sitting on the porch watching the rain, let those details breathe on the page.
You don’t need to squeeze every minor detail into the space, but anchor the story with the things that defined them. Talk about the texture of their days—what they actually did when they weren’t working, or the quirks that made them who they were. Keep the family listing honest. And if your person cared deeply about a specific cause, local charity, or community fund, use the obituary to direct people there. Pointing memorial contributions toward a passion they lived for turns their passing into a lasting ripple of good.
Just as important as what you put in is what you leave on the cutting-room floor. Leave out corporate marketing speak, cliché filler, and forced perfection. You don’t need to whitewash their rough edges. A person’s character often lives in their stubbornness, their humor, and the specific way they handled life’s hard knocks. Honesty is always more respectful than perfection. And above all, keep it focused entirely on honoring the deceased—this is not the place to settle old scores or leave subtle hints about family drama.
Writing this down doesn’t have to be a solo marathon. Try not to write by committee with six people shouting suggestions over your shoulder. Let one person take the pen and draft the heart of it, then pass it around the core circle for quick checks on names and dates. Keep an eye on the clock so you aren’t rushing against newspaper deadlines at midnight. Before you send it off, read the draft out loud to yourself. If you stumble over a sentence or it sounds like a stranger wrote it, rewrite it until it sounds like your person’s voice.
At the end of the day, there is no wrong way to write an obituary as long as it is a true reflection of the life it is for.
Looking for More Guidance?
For more practical tools and guidance on navigating life’s toughest moments, visit our family resource library. It is a collection of resources from our family to yours, built to help you keep your footing when things get heavy. Find more at randolphscustomcaskets.com/library.
0 Comments