Do you ever read the obituaries?
I do every single day and have since I was a kid. People think I'm morbid but I'm not. (Never mind I love www.findagrave.com and www.Findadeath.com) The obits are interesting. My next door neighbor, Dorothy Jones, read the obits everyday and she was always in the know about everything going on. I look at it as keeping up.
I've learned of deaths of parents of people I knew from school, or people I used to go to church with, work with, etc. When you have experienced loss, you know how much it means to get a card, or a visit at the funeral home. I learned this from my own father's death and try to respond when I can in such situations. It's impossible when a death occurs to let everybody you know know the news.
Another fun thing about the obituaries is that some are very long and detailed, giving lots of interesting info about the person who has passed. You can find out people who are kin to each other that you didn't know were kin.
The funniest thing is seeing the nicknames. There are lots of people called "Pee Wee", "Booger," "Big Mama"...whoda thunk the obits could be so entertaining? The nicknames give a bit of an insight as to who the person was and what kind of personality they had.
Needless to say, to see an obituary of an infant, or child or any young person is disturbing and I always wonder what happened and say a silent prayer for the families left behind.
Obituaries aren't cheap either. When my stepfather died last year, it cost a buttload to have a small obituary and a photo in the Sunday paper. Talk about price gouging!! My stepfather, being tight with a buck, would have pitched a royal fit if he'd have known my mother spent like $500 on his obituary.
1 comment:
Ok the weirdness continues. One of my strongest memories from growing up is that whenever I spent the night with my grandparents they would listen to the obituaries on the local radio station every morning during breakfast. There would be comments, discussion or phone calls depending upon how well they knew someone that was listed. It seemed perfectly normal to me and again was a kind of "keeping up" like you said. Funerals in my family have always been a social event and community gathering. This was a strange and tough adjustment for my husband who had never attended a funeral in his life before our marriage. I admit I still glance through the obits just in case I recognize somebody.
Of course, our community still has a cemetary cleaning day and fundraising picnic for maintainence and upkeep on the 2nd Saturday in August just like the last 200 years.
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