Death often takes us unaware, even when there has been an illness. And in a state of confusion, grief, and fatigue we are expected to attend to practical details, one of which may be encouraging the local paper to write an obituary (the essay-like story about the deceased written by a staff writer, not the paid-for death notice listing the surviving family members, etc.). In the past, papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post wrote obituaries mostly about the rich, the famous, and the important local dead. More recently, recognizing that the obituary page is the first page many people turn to in the morning (to see which friends have left this world), they have begun writing interesting stories about regular (albeit sometimes eccentric) people. Obituaries can and should be interesting stories, not boring brag fests. Here are some links to sites for fans of obituaries, to examples of interesting obituaries, and to related sites.

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The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson. Read a selection from this delightful book about "vivid obituaries" and obituary writers on Marilyn's website.
Other books on the obit:
• Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers by Alana Baranick, Stephen Miller, and Jim Sheeler.
• Life After Death: The Art of the Obituary by Nigel Starck. Check this interesting review by Graeme Leech (The Australian News, 8-26-06). "Murdoch's revolution brought more space to fill, hence editors turned to obituaries, with their long narratives and steady supply of subjects. A new breed of obituary editors appeared, apparently bent on ridding their columns of euphemisms and dullards....Starck looks at what it takes to make it to the obituary page. He points out that women are in a minority of about one to four. Then he suggests six areas that may attract an editor: fame, association with fame, single acts of notoriety, heroism, villainy and eccentricity. Perhaps some of these criteria tend to exclude women, with the exception of those wives or mistresses of famous men, in which case it can be an excuse to revisit the life of the man, if deceased."
• Obit: Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People Who Led Extraordinary Lives by Jim Sheeler (an anthology celebrating life, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning obituary writer)
• The Last Word: The New York Times Book of Obituaries and Farewells : A Celebration of Unusual Lives, ed. by Marvin Siegel
• 52 McGs.: The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Reporter Robert McG. Thomas . Publishers Weekly wrote: "A 'lover of the farfetched and the overlooked,' as novelist Mallon puts it in his appreciative introduction, the late New York Times reporter Robert McG. Thomas Jr. (1939-2000) developed a loyal following for quirky, witty obituaries that illuminated the lives of people not automatically destined for 'the Newspaper of Record.'"
• The Obits: The New York Times Annual 2012 (ed. William McDonald, foreword by Pete Hamill). Obits from August 2010 to July 2011.
• The Economist Book of Obituaries ed. Ann Wroe and Keith Colquhoun (from obits published in The Economist from 1994 to 2008).

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Facebook: A new way to mourn? (Michael Morrison, for the Calgary Herald, : "An interesting thing happened the days following the Virginia Tech shootings. All over the Facebook community, groups were created to remember those who had been lost in the States' latest gun tragedy.

Lives Lived, on the Facts & Arguments page (every day the Globe and Mail's Lives Lived column features someone who has died)

Portraits of Grief. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Times published these short biographical sketches as a way to remember the lives of victims of the event. Ten years later, the Times revisited families to learn how they have coped, changed and carried on since that day: The Reckoning . Selected portraits rotate on a regular basis.

John Fairfax, Who Rowed Across Oceans, Dies at 74 (Margalit Fox, NY Times, 2-18-12)

Lili Bermant, who died after a hiking accident, at age 83, was interviewed the by Yiddish Book Center 11-10-10, thank goodness. You can hear her online!

Jerry Robinson, Godfather of a Comic-Book Villain, Dies at 89 (Dennis Hevesi, NY Times, 12-8-11)

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Kathryn Mayo Candresse (1953-2008)

Kathryn Mayo Candresse died August 7, 2008, in Birmingham, Alabama.  Born May 29, 1953, she was a native of Birmingham and had lived near Bordeaux, France, for the past twenty-two years.  Her family posted an official obituary in the local paper, for her father's generation. The one that follows Kathy wrote herself, for her friends:

After dancing a tight tango with cancer for five years, Kathryn Mayo was eliminated from the dance contest August 7, 2008.  In lieu of a wake worthy of her Irish heritage, her family will be receiving friends at Jefferson Memorial Gardens funeral home from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, August 8th.  Funeral services will be held at 10:00am, August 9th. 

Although born and raised in Birmingham, Kathy Mayo lived most of her adult life in Bordeaux, France where she found a culture more in tune with her philosophical bent and taste for fine wine.  Kathy worked in research and teaching in Microbiology at the University of Bordeaux and always said that if she were reincarnated the ultimate irony would be to come back as a lab mouse.

She is survived by her husband, Thierry Candresse, virologist, and her daughter, Camille, sweetie-pie, who reside in France.  Her surviving family in America consists of her father, John C. Mayo; her older brother's family, John P. and Ellen Mayo, and offspring Bradley, Mimi, and Anna (of Nashville, TN); her younger sister's family, Donna and her husband Forrest Duncan, Donna's daughter Gray Vargas, and Forrest's children, Caroline and Graham Duncan. .

Kathryn will be remembered by her fellow students at E.B.Erwin High School for her knobby knees and thick glasses, by the students of Auburn University for her witless choice of major subject (Botany), and by professors at the Pennsylvania State University for her total lack of seriousness as a student. They gave her a master's degree in Plant Pathology against their better judgment…

The accomplishments of which she was most proud were her black belt in Aikido, actually getting paid for playing the harp for weddings and receptions, staying married to the same person for over 20 years, being able to make herself understood in French, having a baby at the age of 41, and a prize for research on a bacterium that causes stomach ulcers.