The New Look in Obituaries

If you don’t prepare an obituary as part of your estate planning package, your heirs might have a bit of fun with it, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription might be required). The article says that funeral home directors noticed that in recent years survivors have been willing to point out that no one was perfect, including the deceased. Obituaries tend to include both the positive and negative traits of the departed.

Most obituaries remain more solemn, but funeral directors have noted an increase in those that are a bit playful—tributes acknowledging that people tend to be mixed bags and that few are candidates for sainthood.

Obituaries published by U.S. newspapers or websites over the past few years describe deceased relatives as “cantankerous,” “grouchy,” “demanding old fart,” “sore loser” and “pain in the butt.”

One possible reason for warts-and-all obituaries is that social media have conditioned people to share more with strangers. Americans have grown “more open and apt to have a sense of humor rather than denial about death,” said Susan Soper, author of “ObitKit,” an obituary-writing guidebook. More also want to “celebrate someone for who they are,” she said, “not some cookie-cutter person.”