Yes, I admit it. I read the obituaries in the Sunday newspaper. I figure that as long as my name isn’t listed, the day has a chance of being decent.
One thing I noticed this week was the alphabeticalization of the obituaries. If I didn’t know better, and I may not, it would seem to a newcomer that people in Hawaii are only allowed to die alphabetically. That’s how they’re listed in most newspapers.
There are plenty of questions we can ask about those who appear in the obituaries. The names don’t tell us much. Japanese seem to live longer than anyone else. Nobody old has a recent photograph.
Not only am I interested in the name and age, I’m also interested in the cause of death; information which doesn’t show up in most obituaries. It’s easy to guess why some 89-year old Japanese woman died, but what about the 32-year old man, the 14-year old girl, or the woman who died at my age.
Why a person died isn’t information that’s important to the deceased, but the family would do the rest of us a favor by letting us know what happened. I would like to know what’s coming and what’s possible and what to look out for.
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