Obit. Page #10

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"Elinor Smith was born in Freeport, Long Island,

on August 17th, 1911.

Parents vaudeville actors."

I said to Bill, I said, "Man, not for nothin',

but this has got to be the oldest advance obit

we have for someone who was still alive

up until like a year or two ago."

This advance was written in 1931.

We didn't use it for 80 years.

I know it wasn't much use to stay up any longer,

so here I am.

I hope it's all right.

I made a mistake in yesterday's obit,

which is actually-- it's a good illustration

of the pitfalls that are around every corner.

I mean, it's a small error, but it's an error nonetheless.

I said that Wilson's grandfather

was a Democratic congressman from Illinois,

and there was an email this morning with a citation

from a congressional biography that in fact

he was a Republican congressman from Illinois.

Interestingly enough--i mean, I'm kind of shooting myself,

because it was an error that really--

completely, completely avoidable.

Really, I just could have left out,

um, the party designation

and, you know, without hurting the obit at all.

I just could have called him a Congressman from Illinois.

Too many fact, too many facts.

Does writing obituaries change you in some way?

Does it make you look at history

or people, life, or death in a different kind of way?

And I think it...

it does and it doesn't.

Yes, does writing obituaries make you, you know,

think about mortality and what that means?

Absolutely it does, yes.

Yeah, you can ask me, uh, if writing about them every day

makes me think about my own mortality.

I think about it all the time.

There's nothing really...

much more worthwhile to think about

for people in general, I think.

It makes me think about death every day.

Which is--when you, you know, when you...

I mean, think about it, that's fairly profound.

And it's happening at a time when,

you know, I'm in my late 50s.

I'm gonna be 60 at the end of the year.

It's happening at a time in my life when, you know,

when I realize it's not gonna go on--

my life isn't gonna go on forever.

I think a lot of people at my age

begin to consider mortality

and how best to spend whatever time we have left.

Because you're spending a lot of time

with the way lives evolved

and what the arc of a life is like,

it makes you think about...

it makes you think about you own life

and how it's developed over time.

And what will your obituary read like?

What are these defining moments,

and how do they assemble themselves

into some kind of coherent story?

It's not so much that I think, "Well, what will my obit say?"

I don't really care.

I don't think it'll-- it won't be--

if there is one!

But it's not that, but it's--

you're reading about these various people

and seeing what they did in their lives,

and seeing the full circle, the full arc.

It does give you a little bit of--it gives you some pause

to think about your own life.

Am I accomplishing anything?

Am I gonna have any impact?

Am I leaving anything?

You know, the fundamentals of human life remain the same.

Childhood, adolescence, old age.

Life is not a simple arc.

That's what you learn writing obits.

Life is ups, and downs, and bumps, and changes,

and scrapes, and reversals, and tangents.

You're lucky if your life has a consistent theme,

because most of it is buffeted.

It's a good thing that the Times

generally assigns older people to write obituaries,

because we've all had, you know, all the people on the desk,

we've all had loved ones die.

The appreciation of the universality of this situation

is extremely helpful.

It certainly changes your sense of what lives are like

and what accomplishments really mean

and what the experience of death is.

There's nothing you can do about dying, by the way.

I just thought I might point that out.

Did you notice, Dan, in that email,

that he also wrote under a pseudonym.

You could probably check both names.

- I didn't see... - Lemme, lemme--

lemme send it to you again,

maybe you never got the original.

Same person, but...

Oh, he's not dead?

He is 93.

Uh, no, we don't know.

I mean, he's--he's got a lot of black and white pictures,

but he's got a lot, a lot of color pictures too

that are quite beautiful.

Okay, I'll call Bruce off it.

Okay, Bruce--Bruce, you're called off that.

We wanna see if someone who actually knows about this stuff

can write it.

Pretty good story.

Last week was a heavy death week in my life.

Uh,clips,under 833-364-231.

There's no way I'm gonna find it!

Yeah, I know.

Maybe on-- maybe on Peter's desk.

Maybe I should write down the number?

Yeah, that would be great.

We could add it, if you want.

I mean, he worked there for a long time.

I think it, you know, it does--

it does bear mentioning.

- We can add it to the online. - Yeah.

Okay, that's-- that's what the web is for.

Yeah.

- As long as you're okay with it. - Yeah, it's okay.

- It's not a correction. - No, not at all,

definitely not.

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