How to Write an Obituary: Crafting a Final Tribute That Honors a Life Well-Lived

Death makes terrible writers of us all. I learned this firsthand when my grandmother passed away three winters ago, and suddenly I—someone who writes for a living—found myself staring at a blank page, completely paralyzed. How do you compress ninety-two years of living, loving, and laughing into a few hundred words? How do you capture the essence of someone who taught you to make pierogi from scratch, who snuck you butterscotch candies during church, who could silence a room with one raised eyebrow?

The obituary, that peculiar literary form that sits somewhere between journalism and poetry, demands something unique from us. It asks us to be historians, storytellers, and grief-stricken family members all at once. After fumbling through my grandmother's obituary (and later helping dozens of families with theirs), I've come to understand that writing an obituary isn't just about following a formula—it's about finding the right words when words feel impossibly inadequate.

The Weight of Words in Grief

Before we dive into the mechanics, let's acknowledge what we're really doing here. An obituary serves multiple masters. For the family, it's a cathartic exercise, a way to process loss through language. For the community, it's an announcement, a formal notification that someone who walked among them has departed. For history, it's a record, a small monument in newsprint or pixels that says: this person existed, and they mattered.

I've noticed that people approach obituary writing with two common misconceptions. First, they think it needs to read like a resume—a dry recitation of dates, jobs, and survivors. Second, they believe they need to present a sanitized version of the deceased, all sharp edges smoothed away. Both approaches rob the obituary of its power to truly honor a life.

Your Aunt Martha who collected ceramic frogs and made the world's worst potato salad but never missed your birthday? She deserves better than boilerplate. The obituary is perhaps the last place where we can capture someone's authentic self, quirks and all.

Starting With the Bones

Every obituary needs a skeleton of facts, but how you flesh it out makes all the difference. Begin with the full name of the deceased, including any nicknames that mattered. My grandmother was Josephine Marie Kowalski to the government, but she was Babcia Jo to everyone who loved her. Don't bury the person you're honoring under formality.

The date and place of death come next, and here's where you make your first real choice. Some families prefer euphemisms—"passed away peacefully," "went to be with the Lord," "lost her battle with cancer." Others prefer directness—"died," plain and simple. There's no wrong answer, but consider what the deceased would have wanted. My grandmother, who called things as she saw them, got "died." She would have rolled her eyes at anything fancier.

Age matters, but so does context. Instead of just "age 92," consider "in her 93rd year" or "just two months shy of her 93rd birthday." These small details paint a fuller picture.

The Art of the Life Summary

Here's where most obituaries go off the rails, devolving into a chronological march through time that reads like a LinkedIn profile. Yes, you need to mention where they were born, where they lived, what they did for work. But the magic happens in the details you choose to highlight.

Instead of "John worked at General Motors for 35 years," try "John spent 35 years at General Motors, where he was known for organizing the annual plant picnic and never missing a coworker's retirement party." See the difference? One tells us what John did for money. The other tells us who John was.

Education, military service, career achievements—these all have their place. But balance them with the texture of a life actually lived. Did they grow prize-winning tomatoes? Coach Little League for two decades? Never miss an episode of Jeopardy? These details matter more than you might think.

The Delicate Dance of Relationships

Listing survivors and those who preceded in death seems straightforward until you're faced with modern family complexity. Divorced spouses, estranged children, chosen family, life partners who were never legally recognized—navigating these waters requires both sensitivity and backbone.

My advice? Have the difficult conversations with family members before you write. Better to hash out who gets mentioned and how while you're drafting than to cause hurt feelings in print. I've seen obituaries that gracefully handled everything from multiple marriages to adopted children to lifelong friends who were closer than blood relatives. The key is intentionality—every inclusion or exclusion should be deliberate, not accidental.

One approach I particularly admire: "She is survived by her children [names], her chosen daughter [name], and her former husband [name], who remained a dear friend." This acknowledges complex relationships without drama.

Beyond the Facts: Capturing a Spirit

The best obituaries I've read—the ones that made me wish I'd known the person—go beyond biographical data to capture something essential about how that person moved through the world. This doesn't mean writing a hagiography. It means finding the true notes among all the possible things you could say.

Was your father the guy who could fix anything with duct tape and determination? Did your mother have a laugh that could be heard three houses away? Did your brother give legendary bad advice but somehow always made you feel better? These are the details that resurrect someone on the page, if only for a moment.

I remember reading an obituary that mentioned the deceased always carried extra dog treats in his pocket for the neighborhood dogs, even though he didn't own a pet. That single detail told me more about that man's character than any list of professional accomplishments could have.

The Question of Tone

Obituaries don't have to be relentlessly solemn. If someone lived with humor, why shouldn't their obituary reflect that? I've read obituaries that made me laugh out loud—intentionally. One mentioned that the deceased "finally won his decades-long battle with the lawn, though we suspect he simply outlasted it." Another noted that "she maintained her lifelong perfect record of never cooking a meal that was both edible and hot."

The trick is reading the room, even when that room is made of newsprint. Humor works when it feels authentic to the deceased and appropriate to the circumstances. A sudden tragic death probably isn't the time for jokes. But for someone who lived a long life and faced death with characteristic wit? Let their personality shine through.

Practical Matters and Hidden Costs

Let's talk money, because nobody else will until you're grieving and suddenly faced with per-word charges. Newspaper obituaries aren't free—they're advertising, and they're priced accordingly. A standard obituary in a major metropolitan newspaper can run hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on length and whether you include a photo.

This reality forces brutal editing decisions. Do you cut the paragraph about their volunteer work or the list of grandchildren? Do you skip the photo to afford an extra fifty words? These aren't just editorial choices; they're emotional ones.

Many families now write two versions: a full obituary for online posting (funeral home websites, social media, email) where space is unlimited and free, and a condensed version for newspaper publication. This isn't giving up—it's being practical while still honoring your loved one properly.

The Digital Afterlife

Speaking of online obituaries, we need to talk about the strange new world of digital memorialization. Online obituaries don't disappear after a week like newspaper ones. They become permanent monuments in the digital landscape, searchable forever, accumulating comments and virtual flowers years after publication.

This permanence changes the calculus of what to include. That family dispute you might have glossed over in newsprint becomes a potential flashpoint when cousin Eddie can comment publicly. The flip side? Online obituaries can become beautiful repositories of memory, with friends and distant relatives adding stories and photos you never knew existed.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

After helping numerous families through this process, I've seen the same mistakes repeated. The most common? Writing by committee. When seventeen family members each insist on adding their favorite memory, you end up with an incoherent mess. Designate one or two writers, gather everyone's input, but maintain a unified voice.

Another pitfall: the assumption that longer equals better. A tight, well-crafted 300-word obituary beats a rambling 1,000-word one every time. Every sentence should earn its place.

Watch out for clichés masquerading as comfort. "She never met a stranger" appears in approximately 30% of obituaries I read. If you must use it, at least give an example: "She never met a stranger, once inviting the cable repairman to stay for Thanksgiving dinner (he accepted)."

The Final Read

Before you submit an obituary anywhere, read it aloud. Better yet, have someone who didn't know the deceased well read it to you. Do they get a sense of who this person was? Are there confusing passages? Unclear relationships? This isn't the time for ambiguity.

Check your facts obsessively. Nothing undermines an obituary faster than getting someone's name wrong or miscounting the grandchildren. Print it out, mark it up, fact-check every single detail. The newspaper won't catch your errors—they'll just print them for everyone to see.

A Personal Reflection

Writing my grandmother's obituary taught me that the hardest part isn't finding the right words—it's accepting that no words will ever be fully right. No obituary, no matter how beautifully crafted, can contain a whole person. The best we can do is create a sketch that suggests the fullness of the life lived.

But here's what surprised me: the act of writing itself became a form of mourning, a way of processing loss through language. As I struggled to describe my grandmother's legendary stubbornness (she once drove six hours through a blizzard because she'd promised to babysit), her unexpected tenderness (she kept every grandchild's drawing in a special box), and her fierce independence (she mowed her own lawn until age 90), I found myself understanding her—and missing her—in new ways.

The Last Word

An obituary is many things: an announcement, a record, a tribute. But fundamentally, it's an act of love performed under the worst possible circumstances. Give yourself grace if the words don't come easily. They're not supposed to.

Remember that you're not writing for English teachers or newspaper editors. You're writing for everyone who loved this person and for future generations who might wonder about their roots. You're writing to say: this person was here, they mattered, and their absence changes the shape of the world, even if only in small ways.

The obituary I wrote for my grandmother wasn't perfect. I forgot to mention her legendary Christmas cookies and spent too many words on her career as a seamstress. But I captured something true about her, and in the end, that's all any of us can hope to do—tell a small truth about someone we loved, as best we can, with whatever words we can muster in our grief.

Take your time. Be specific. Honor the complexity. And remember: the best obituary is one written with love, even if that love makes the writing harder. Especially then.

Authoritative Sources:

Johnson, Marilyn. The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. HarperCollins, 2006.

Sheeler, Jim. Obit: Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People Who Led Extraordinary Lives. Pruett Publishing Company, 2007.

National Funeral Directors Association. "Writing an Obituary." NFDA.org, National Funeral Directors Association, 2023.

Marks, Stephen. "The History and Cultural Significance of Obituaries." Death Studies, vol. 45, no. 3, 2021, pp. 234-251.

Society of Professional Obituary Writers. "Guidelines for Obituary Writing." SPOW.org, Society of Professional Obituary Writers, 2023.