Take a deep breath and calm down. What you are about to do will be an extremely emotional experience, but when you get to the other side you will have a newfound sense of peace.
You are tasked with writing your parent’s obituary. Their final life summary that will be all over Google if people look up their name between now and eternity.
I know how you feel. I sat in your shoes when I was 20 years old, trying to figure out what to write for my mom. How to summarize her 47 years of life into this piece of paper.
To me writing an obituary felt a lot like a sad game of Madlibs. X person from Y town died and had Z interests. As the funeral director walked me through the process I answered all his questions and this is what we were left with.
“Sewing, Quilting, and Watching Movies” are you kidding me? That was the best that I had at the time. It was an emotional experience and I had no idea what I was doing.
Now that I have had an adequate amount of time to reflect I would have done it way differently. Here are a few tips I have for writing your parent’s obituary.
- Lead with what’s important.
“Susan DeSchepper was the most caring mother on planet Earth.” If people are going to stumble on her webpage in 40 years I don’t want to bury the lede. If you could share one thing about your parent with the entire world what would it be? That is what should be the first line of their obituary. - Save the “you” for last.
“You are telling a story here, honoring your parent’s life. Don’t dive into the “is survived by” too early. Talk about your mom or dad’s interests and do this better than I did.
“She really enjoyed quilting. Having completed 7 quilts over the last 10 years for all of her cousins.” Add some context to these stories to make them come to life. After you get through their story then you can talk about the family right before providing the services details and donation instructions.
- Be prepared
When we wrote my mom’s obituary I was drastically unprepared. I walked into a meeting about casket pricing, (don’t get me started on that 🤯) and ended up being asked to finalize her obituary. I wish I would have slowed down and took more time to put actual thought into it. Even if I had an hour by myself with some examples I would have walked in there more prepared to create a better final product. - Sell the donation
Why put it on there if you aren’t going to try and promote it? Flowers are great but I threw them away a week or so later. I wish I would have pushed a local charity or non for profit harder so that she could make one final impact in our community.
These are my quick tips for writing your parent’s obituary. There is nothing fun about this process but I am hoping with this feedback from my experience your process can suck just a little bit less than mine did.
