Obituary Writing in the Selfie Age
Haverhill, Mass.
As a local newspaper reporter for 50 years, Tom Vartabedian has written thousands of obituaries. In May, he wrote one about himself.
After finishing a draft, he felt relief. “I had written probably the most important story of my life,” he said.
Mr. Vartabedian was following his own advice. The 75-year-old weekly columnist for the Haverhill Gazette recently taught a class on writing your own obituary at a senior center in town.
“Don’t leave anything to chance,” he said, “the chance that somebody else makes a debacle of it.”
Watch the video: Veteran reporter Tom Vartabedian wrote hundreds of obituaries during his newspaper career. This year he was asked to teach a class to senior citizens on how to write their own.
Friends and family mean well, but they may skip a cherished accomplishment or miss a favored family survivor. His advice: Leave a script.
This spring, 30 people showed up for Mr. Vartabedian’s 10-hour course. Among them was Barbara O’Shea, 76 years old, a retired court clerk. “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging,” she told Mr. Vartabedian during class, but she wondered if she should mention her two bowling trophies.
“Don’t think that your life is any more insignificant than anyone else’s,” Mr. Vartabedian told the class.
One by one, Mr. Vartabedian’s students revealed parts of their lives: a pet quail; a trip to Lourdes, France; the polka club; missionary trips; work as a voting clerk.
Students listened to Tom Vartabedian read an obituary at the Citizen Center in Haverhill, Mass.
Bill Rogers Jr. brought in a draft typed on a sheet from a yellow legal pad. He doesn’t own a computer.
Of his love for animals, Mr. Rogers, a 65-year-old retired vegetable farmer and school caretaker, wrote, “His soul will stop at Pet Heaven, before going to Heaven.” He also noted that he helped out at a thrift shop and served on a committee that oversees local hiking trails.
Mr. Rogers wrote about the time the Montessori school where he worked honored him with a “Mr. Bill Day.”
One problem, though, is he can’t remember which year that was. Don’t worry about being exact, Mr. Vartabedian said. “You can get away with a lot of things in an obituary.”
One of Mr. Vartabedian’s students, Kalister Green-Byrd, 82, was a teenage mother in Alabama who cleaned houses during the day and finished high school at night. She became the first in her family to finish college and earned two master’s degrees. She joined the class, she said, partly because her eight children might have never realized “I was an individual and a person before I became a mother.”
Julie De Veaux, 84, began her obituary saying she was a staunch member of Calvary Baptist church. She worked for government agencies and the YMCA, where she was once employee of the month. She taught Sunday school and sang in several choirs. “She did not sing great,” she wrote. “However, it was her greatest joy.”
Obituaries typically are written by funeral home employees, often using disjointed information from grieving family members. Few people write their own, say funeral directors, though the number is rising.
“Baby boomers want to tell their own story,” said Stephen Kemp, president of Haley Funeral Directors in Bloomfield, Mich.
The growing interest has swelled a cottage industry of obituary coaching. “We’re becoming a selfie culture, so why wouldn’t we want to have a hand in how we’re remembered?” said Sarah White, a 59-year-old freelance writer in Madison, Wis., who teaches how to write memoirs and obituaries.
The first lesson is put the best stuff—“what I call the song and dance,” she said—at the top.
Tom Vartabedian's students working on drafts of their obituaries.
Paula Davis, a funeral director in Spokane, Wash., tells the students in her obituary-writing class that facts are important. “It’s amazing when people die and nobody in the family knows which town they were born in,” she said.
Ms. Davis, 70 years old, gives her own obituary as an example of what to include. Her students learn, for example, she can make 400 dinner rolls in a morning, and her favorite song is “My Way” sung by Shirley Bassey.
Susan Soper tries to ease the pain of writing. The former journalist created “ObitKit,” a fill-in-the-blank workbook. It offers such writing prompts as “favorite things about yourself,” “regrets or roads not taken” and “indulgences or extravagant splurges.” The workbook has sold more than 9,000 copies since 2009.
Decades ago, small-town newspapers assigned reporters to write obituaries on lots of people. Now, they generally write only about the most prominent. Deaths are generally announced in paid notices written by relatives or funeral- home employees.
Julie De Veaux, left and Shirley Fultz listen to a discussion in Tom Vartabedian’s obituary-writing class.
During Mr. Vartabedian’s 50-year newspaper career at the Haverhill Gazette (circulation of about 2,500), he wrote sports, city government and human interest stories, including a feature about a woman who collected pencils. Obituaries, he said, were always the most meaningful. To do them justice, he searched for the essence of each person’s life.
“If somebody was kind to animals and rescued stray cats from the Merrimack River, I would use that as the lead for that person’s obit. You have to grab them right off the bat,” Mr. Vartabedian said, snapping his fingers.
His wife of 51 years, Nancy, a retired schoolteacher, doesn’t share his passion. She will leave their grown children the job of writing her obituary. “After I’m gone, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “They can write whatever they want.”
When Mr. Vartabedian began to compose his obituary in May, he had plenty of material. His parents, Armenian immigrants, ran a coffee shop. He majored in journalism at Boston University and studied at the Armenian Catholic monastery in Vienna. His newspaper writing earned awards; his racquetball skills won prizes. He helped raise three children, led Armenian community programs and climbed peaks including Mount Washington in New England.
Mr. Rogers hopes his obituary will be seen by his estranged sister, who disapproved of his plan to donate his estate to support two zoos. “My sister doesn’t know me,” he told his class. “I’m writing this so she will know me.”
Tom Vartabedian encourages his students to use humor and lots of detail in their self-written obituaries.
For Mr. Vartabedian, the writing task had some urgency. He was recently diagnosed with stage-four gastrointestinal cancer. Between his medical treatments and family duties, he continues to field inquiries about his class.
Mr. Vartabedian said he wasn’t afraid to die. “I’m really curious as to what’s on the other side,” he said. “What’s heaven like? Hopefully, I’ll end up there.”
The latest draft of his 875-word obituary says his death follows a courageous battle with cancer. “At least I want to think it is,” Mr. Vartabedian said.
Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
