Writing Obituaries That Actually Honor Someone
Obituaries are harder to write well than most people realize. You spend weeks or months dealing with paperwork, notifications, and logistics. Then you sit down to write a few paragraphs about a person, and suddenly everything feels inadequate. I've written or helped write a dozen or so over the years. Here's what I've learned. When two people pass around the same time — whether they're related, partners, or close friends — the instinct is often to combine them into one notice. It saves space. It feels efficient. It also tends to flatten both of their stories into something generic. I've seen it happen too many times. The smarter move is to write separate obituaries that reference each other. That way, each person gets their own arc, their own specifics, and their own legacy. Cross-referencing handles the connection without erasing individuality. Here's the standard formula everyone copies from newspaper templates:
Full name. Age. Date and location of death. Survived by. Service details. "In lieu of flowers..." That's a skeleton. It has no pulse. The reason most obituaries read like employee evaluations is that the writer focuses on facts instead of the person. Facts are fine. They belong at the top. But the body needs actual texture. A better approach: lead with who they actually were. Not their job title. Not their achievements on paper. What did they do on a Tuesday afternoon? Who did they annoy lovingly? What made them laugh until they couldn't breathe?
A Practical Walkthrough
Let me walk through how I'd approach this with two subjects. Say Martin was a machinist who spent thirty years at a parts factory and Castille was a retired schoolteacher who volunteered at the local library. Both passed within months of each other. They were married for forty-two years. The combined-obituary trap would read something like: "Martin and Castille died peacefully surrounded by family. They are survived by their children and grandchildren." That's it. Two humans reduced to a single sentence of proximity. Separate obituaries look different. Martin's opens with the fact that he could machine any part to a hundredth of an inch and kept a drawer full of broken watches he never stopped trying to fix. Castille's opens with the fact that she memorized every student's favorite book and wrote personalized recommendations on index cards for twenty-seven years. Then each one mentions the other naturally — not as an afterthought, but as a central relationship.
Get the Full Details
The Specific Problem I Hit Recently
Last year I was helping a client draft two obituaries where the surviving family was deeply split. One side of the family wanted a traditional religious service emphasized. The other side wanted something secular and celebratory. We ended up writing two separate obituaries with different tones, then adding a joint survivor list and a single line at the bottom noting that a combined memorial would be held. It satisfied everyone without pretending the families agreed on everything. The workaround was honest about the divergence instead of papering over it. Specificity is what separates a forgettable notice from one people actually read and keep. "He was a good man" means nothing. "He spent every Saturday morning reorganizing the community garden by plot number and soil type" means something. The same goes for the other direction — "She loved her family" is empty. "She called her daughter at 7 PM every night for eleven years, even during the rough patch in 2019" is memorable. Include things that can't be verified. Hobbies that didn't amount to anything professionally. Small habits. Favorite foods that weren't particularly good. The fact that he always lost at Scrabble despite knowing all the obscure words. The fact that she collected ceramic frogs and had exactly 47 of them displayed around the house.
What to Avoid
Don't inflate. I've seen obituaries describe someone as a "devoted parent" when they had one child who spoke to them twice a year. Don't invent virtue. If the person had flaws — and everyone does — you don't need to list them, but you also don't need to pretend the person was a saint. A brief honest note like "he was stubborn to a fault but never refused to help you move" carries more weight than a hundred superlatives. Don't ignore the date problem. When two obituaries are published close together, newspapers sometimes merge them automatically due to space constraints. Call the publication ahead of time and request separate columns. It usually costs the same or nearly the same. The effort takes five minutes.
Where to Publish
Local newspapers remain the standard. Most have online versions now, and some offer permanent digital archives. Facebook memorial pages have become a practical supplement — they allow longer text, photo albums, and comment sections where people share memories. I recommend publishing the formal version in the newspaper and posting a slightly expanded version on a memorial page. The newspaper version handles the official record. The online version handles the living memory. There's no single download link or template that solves this. Word processors have obituary templates, but they're starting points, not answers. The real work is deciding what to include and what to leave out. That decision process is where the actual honoring happens.
The Hard Part
The hardest sentence to write is the one about how they died, if you choose to include it at all. Some families want it stated plainly. "Died after a long battle with Alzheimer's." Others prefer "Died peacefully at home surrounded by family." Neither is wrong. The choice depends entirely on what feels true to the people writing it and what the deceased would have wanted. There's no universal rule here. Once you have the draft, show it to at least one person who knew both individuals well but wasn't part of the immediate writing process. They'll catch the things you're too close to see. Maybe a detail is wrong. Maybe something important is missing. Maybe the tone reads as colder than intended. That feedback pass usually takes twenty minutes and prevents weeks of regret. The finished obituary isn't a perfect record. It never will be. It's a snapshot taken from one angle at one moment. But it's better than silence, and for most people, that's the point.
