By Wm. Cook
Every obituary is, in a sense, a mirror. It reflects back not only who you were but also how others saw you. The spouse, the children, the grandchildren, the friends—those closest to you will be the sculptors of that remembrance. If you lived with love, courage, kindness, or passion, those qualities are what get carved into stone. If your life was small, selfish, or bitter, the silence that follows may itself be the monument.
What stands the test of time isn’t always fame or grand achievement, but the resonance of a life well lived. Sometimes the greatest monuments are invisible: a child who grew strong because of you, a friend who dared to dream because you encouraged them, a stranger you helped who never forgot.
A good obituary, like a good life, should quietly answer a few questions:
• Did they love deeply?
• Did they give more than they took?
• Did they leave the world better, even in some small corner of it?
• Did they live with passion, as the Greeks asked?
At the end, we don’t get to write our own statue—others do. But we do provide them with the material. Every day, in small choices, we’re shaping the marble they’ll carve: honesty or deceit, generosity or greed, tenderness or hardness.
So maybe the best obituary is really the one that doesn’t need to be written—because the life itself already speaks so loudly, in memory, story, and example.
Love the obituary writing. A friend once told me, “walk softly and leave heavy footprints “.