Member-only story
I Am the Obituary Whisperer
But I wonder who will write mine?
There’s always one person in the family who is the designated writer-of-all-the-hard-things. In my family, I’ve been that person since I was 14.
“Oh, Kiki will write that letter for you,” my mother would offer breezily to some random relative on the phone. “She has a way with words.”
By 18, I was ghostwriting resumes, wedding toasts, family reunion histories, take-this-job-and-shove-it memos, acceptance speeches, book reports, and anything other people hated to write.
But I was 30 before I had to write my first obituary. A close friend had died suddenly; I was in shock and sick with grief. When her mother asked, I immediately said no, no way, I couldn’t do it.
She insisted. “I want someone who loved her to tell her story,” she said.
I had no idea how to even begin. Every obituary I’d ever seen was a recitation of dates and milestones and survivors. I didn’t want that. I wanted my friend to live again, in all her sweetness and joy, for those few moments of reading.
That was the key to writing these tragic but necessary pieces, I eventually learned. To find the sparkle in their lost lives, and use it to light up their very last words.
