Perhaps you hadn’t noticed: the obituary is dying. As newspapers downsize and disappear, the average person’s expectation of a brief and respectful farewell from the local press has withered away apace. Not surprisingly, a new medium has arisen to address the vacuum — the self-obituary.
How very welcome! No longer does your life story land in the hands of a superannuated hack more interested in catching the 5:15 train than in valorizing your sterling accomplishments. Now your fascinating narrative can be told by someone who really knew it: you.
The Web site obitkit.com hypes what it calls “the last HURRAH!!!” and further urges us to “put the ‘fun’ in funeral!” Obitkit’s happytalkers go on to note that “a Baby Boomer turns 65 every 12 seconds, a good time to start thinking about how we will leave this life — ideally just as we lived it: with personality, panache and style.” There are now adult education courses entitled “Writing Your Own Obituary,” and the increasingly popular Web site legacy.com allows you to do just that.
It’s a great idea, and not a blindingly original one. The Fellows of Cambridge University, “many of whom are in a state that might be mistaken for death,” as the writer David Dalton once observed, pen their own obituaries. This “saves other people the bother of having to make up nice things about them,” Dalton wrote.
The insufficiently appreciated comic genius Spike Milligan wrote his own obituary in 1990, after a complaisant newspaper copy girl showed him his “standing obit,” ready for publication in the event of his death. The memorial ran less than 30 words and summarized Milligan’s life thusly: “He wrote the [famous BBC comedy series] ‘Goon Show’ and died.”
Milligan crafted a much longer obituary, which included satirical accounts of his World War II service — “North Africa, promoted in the field (they wouldn’t let me indoors)” — and musical virtuosity — “fingers wandered idly over the ivory keys … (bang, there goes another elephant).” In fact, he was an accomplished musician and was badly wounded in the war. At the end of the piece, he listed his one hobby: “Writing Goon Shows and dying.”
Milligan died for real in 2002, and his death notices were long and flattering. “Milligan is the great god of us all,” the Monty Python founding member John Cleese told the London Daily Telegraph’s obituarist.
The cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of the “Doonesbury” comic strip, has written an auto-obituary that he occasionally cites during public appearances. It begins: “Feb 3, 2035 — former New York Knicks point guard Garry Trudeau died peacefully in his home today following a particularly fine meal and a visit from his great-grandchildren. Mr. Trudeau, who enjoyed an early modest success as a cartoonist, is best remembered for his abrupt career change when he appeared unannounced at a Knicks tryout camp.”
Just last year, Val Patterson, an engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah, wrote a tell-all auto-obituary that became an Internet sensation. The 59 year-old Patterson celebrated his relationship with his beloved wife Mary Jane, and then added some “confessions and things I should say now.” Confession No. 1: “I AM the guy who stole the safe from the Motor View Drive Inn back in June, 1971.” Glad we cleared that up, Val!
Confession No. 2: “I really am NOT a Ph.D.,” Patterson wrote. It turns out he never even graduated from the University of Utah, where he accumulated only three years of college credit. “In fact,” Patterson wrote, “I never did even learn what the letters ‘Ph.D.’ even stood for.”
Now it’s my turn.
“J. Alexander Beam, author of the famous Introduction to Dr. Arie Zand’s ‘The Political Jokes of Leningrad,’ passed away after a brief illness at an extremely advanced age. A longtime columnist for The Boston Globe, the print precursor to the Web site Yo!BostonzahappeninNOWDude.com, Beam enjoyed a second career as a fundamentalist Mormon missionary in Africa and East Asia. ‘The Mormons seemed like friendly people, and I was drinking too much anyway,’ Beam told the Deseret News in a satellite interview shortly before his timely demise.
“Beam is survived by a multitude of children and several wives, none of whom was eager to be identified at this time.”
Alex Beam is a writer living in Boston.