Trigger warning: Death and dying.

As I sat at yet another memorial service recently, listening to friends and family share memories of a lost loved one, I reminded myself that I should update my obituary.

One unfortunate aspect of aging is that the number of memorial services you attend begins to exceed weddings. My late mother-in-law, Gert Stroyeck, said once that as you hit your 60s and 70s the pace of death increases. More and more of your friends and families die. If you happen to not die, too, there comes a time in your 80s and 90s when you’re spared seeing others die because, well, you’ve outlived them.

OK. Let us establish here that aging gracefully can mean accepting dying gracefully, and, yeah, I know that can be difficult. Memorial services can be hard, but they also can be small occasions of joy. At the one I recently attended, among the tears we had great food — at Alaska potlucks there will always be at least three different salmon dishes — and good company. I got reacquainted with a friend I hadn’t seen since 2004. Memorials are about the dead but come with bonuses.

I wrote the first version of my obituary in 1994 before my wife and I moved to Homer. That spring I taught a class in technical writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I’d never taught technical writing, but after I read the textbook I realized the whole point of technical writing is to write for a specific need, say, chainsaw repair manuals.

To get my students started, I thought I should have them write something personal and practical, a document for a specific purpose that every one of them would at some point in their life would need. I had them write their obituary.

They thought I was nuts, except for the student who worked as a funeral director.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “You’d be surprised at how many people have no idea how to write an obituary.”

I explained to my students that an obituary had several purposes: it announced the death of a person and the funeral arrangements, it presented the basic facts of that person’s life, and it showed some essence of the dead person’s being. I gave them the standard form used by funeral homes. (Peninsula Memorial Chapel has a good one at this link: www.alaskanfuneral.com/resources/forms.)

And because I’d asked my students to write their obituary, I thought it only fair that I write one for myself. I’ve revised it over the years and have told my wife and family where to find it. It includes my memorial directions (for example, read William Carlos Williams’ poem, “Tract”) and a basic biography. There are some blanks to be filled in, like when and where I died, but it’s all there, one less thing for them to do. I am of the philosophy that, in dying, we should make things easy for the people we leave behind. My next big task is Swedish death cleaning.

When I started at the Homer News as an editorial assistant, one of my jobs was to type obituaries. Usually these came from funeral homes. In the early days they were faxed, and when email became more common, all I had to do was copy and paste the obituary and set it up in the system for layout. Before the Homer News started doing obituaries as paid advertisements, I also edited them into Associated Press style.

I don’t know exactly how many obituaries I wrote or prepared at the Homer News. I think I was on the obit desk for at least 20 years, so at one a week, that’s at least 50 a year or 1,000 overall. Sometimes “typing an obituary” meant writing the obituary. People would come in with some handwritten notes and I would sit down and put them in order. I still remember the time I helped Nancy from the Glacier Drive-In write an obituary for a loved one. The next time I went there for a bacon burger, she told me my money was no good. That burger was nice, but really the blessing was to help someone walk gently on the road to grief.

When my mother was dying and I went to New Hampshire to say good-bye, one afternoon a few days before she died we sat down and I interviewed her for her obituary. I still don’t understand how Mom knew she would die that week, but she did so as gracefully as anyone I’ve ever seen die. I hadn’t really asked my mother for all the details of her life. That interview focused things a bit.

I don’t think an obituary has to be fancy or especially creative. The sparks of personality will come in what you want to say about yourself and how you want to be remembered. Even if all you do is fill out a form, at least you save your family the chore of figuring out the details of your life.

But I think there’s a greater gift that comes from writing your own obituary. An obituary acknowledges the hard truth many don’t want to admit. It is the end of our lives, a declaration that we will die. We all know this. Not all of us want to accept this. In accepting death, I think we then will appreciate life that much more, and that, I believe, is how we can begin to age gracefully.

Michael Armstrong worked at the Homer News for 23 years before retiring in 2022. Reach him at wordfolk@gmail.com or follow him on Bluesky at maarmstrong.bsky.social. Follow his band, Shamwari Music Ensemble of Homer, on Facebook.