Grieving widows tell the unvarnished truth While prewritten obituaries are stored in the morgue, post-mortem obits are ...

Not everybody can write an obit that goes viral (or can afford one as lengthy as Stamps', frankly, if paying by the line). But Stamps' death notice shows how small personal details can add depth ...

Obituaries aren’t for the dead. They’re for you. In the midst of funeral planning, estate settling, and managing your grief, an assignment to write an essay might seem like an unfair burden ...

A person should not pretend to be a friend, and a computer should not pretend to be a person. In the narrow context of my mom ...

Mark Twain was in London, hale and hearty, when his obituary was published in the United States. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” he commented. But safeguard your own obituary.

Writing your own obituary can also be therapeutic for the writer, Berman said, prompting reflection on what’s most important, such as the joy of everyday things.

Writing your obituary while you’re still alive can offer clarity about your life and, mercifully, if you find something lacking, you still have time to revise.

So we should write our own obituaries. I believe doing this allows you to literally have the last word. Let’s each of us tell the world what kind of person we were, who we loved and who loved us ...

In writing obituaries, I wanted to do right by their families, and leave a historical record ensuring that their full lives, and not just their passing, were recorded and remembered.