tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17094943.post115745987646790845..comments2024-03-08T02:58:46.131-05:00Comments on Obituary Forum: How they lived their 100-plus yearsAlana Baranickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18082695477704923748noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17094943.post-1160598058992178462006-10-11T16:20:00.000-04:002006-10-11T16:20:00.000-04:00I have been writing obituaries for http://www.obit...I have been writing obituaries for http://www.obitsindia.com/ for quite some time now. Being in India, and people asking for regional type of wording its been very difficult to come up with similar english words.<BR/><BR/>But overall people are happy till moment, learning a lot from experience obituary writers.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17094943.post-1158740374171293552006-09-20T04:19:00.000-04:002006-09-20T04:19:00.000-04:00Thanks for sharing your grandmother's story with u...Thanks for sharing your grandmother's story with us, Linda.<BR/><BR/>I understand where you're coming from, but for the most part some of what you say is not practical for a newspaper obituary.<BR/><BR/>I used to write obits for centenarians that included things like who was president of the United States and what was the news of the day when that person was born.<BR/><BR/>That was when I was an obit-writing novice and more concerned with pounding out an obit on deadline and less concerned about writing a once-in-a-lifetime story about the person's life.<BR/><BR/>The dead people I write about, who are 80 and older, lived through just about all of those things your grandmother lived through. These are things that are not worth listing in an obit. <BR/><BR/>Certainly people who are now 100 or older have lived through everything you listed. <BR/><BR/>It's like saying "I lived through Sept. 11, 2001." Unless I was a survivor of the terrorist attacks, I'm just one of the crowd.<BR/><BR/>I get a lot of obit suggestions from people who are preoccupied with the notion that their dad or granddad was a member of what Tom Brokaw calls "The Greatest Generation." All that says is that this person was old enough to have lived through that part of history. <BR/><BR/>Unless we can say exactly what it was that the deceased did during the Depression or World War II, it's not worth mentioning.<BR/><BR/>If I were writing your gran's obit, I wouldn't be content to say "she worked before she married." I'd want to know what kind of job she had.<BR/><BR/>That's all I'll say at this point. This comment is getting too long.Alana Baranickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18082695477704923748noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17094943.post-1158572711346247382006-09-18T05:45:00.000-04:002006-09-18T05:45:00.000-04:00My gran died at 93, and had (as she said) outlived...My gran died at 93, and had (as she said) outlived everyone she knew. She was immensely important to me growing up and I spent a lot of time with her and knew a lot of her stories, so grandchildren can know a lot. YOu can often say a bit about the very old by putting them in context. My gran was born in the colony of Victoria, before Australia became a federation. He mother was born when the American Civil War was still on, and there were stories that my gran had (when a child) met a man who had survived the battle of Waterloo and was a pensioner from the British Army (her mother had definitely met the Waterloo survivor). She lived through the invention of the phone,saw automobiles go from being something unusual - that she & her brother would run to the road to see- to houses having two car garages. She lived through both World wars, the Depression the influenza epidemic, dipheria and polio epidemics and saw the development of mass vacinations and antibiotics. she listened to radio and watched the moonlanding on television. She worked before she married and onlu paid State income tax (they iposed federal income tax as a temporary measure during the second world war). She married a war hero and said that " I was a good spinster ruined".She came from a family of conversationalists - so I learnt to talk about things, and to be interested in the world. She was a keen gardener (but not as keen as her mother). The best things about her though were that she always had her own view on things and she had a sense of humour. She followed the football until her dying day. She was at peace and ready to die for at least the last twenty years of her life and a dedicated athiest, who was never tempted to recant. she brought a lot of history to life for me, because for her it was her life. And she would have said that she had done nothing and had lived an uneventful life. Anyway, great blog - it made me think about my gran, and I haven't done that for at least a couple of weeks! She died in 1991.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com