"My 'beat' at our local newspaper is death, which is why I was asked to contribute the essay in the first place. Since I have written obituaries in Haines, Alaska (pop. about 2,000), the town where I live, for almost twenty years, the journal's editor assumed that I must know something about last words and good lives. (After all, it is wrong to speak ill of the dead.) Turns out that I do. It just took me a while to believe it, and even longer to say it out loud.
"Writing obituaries is my way of transcending bad news. It has taught me the value of intentionally trying to find the good in people and situations, and that practice — and I do believe that finding the good can be practiced — has made my life more meaningful. I begin each obituary with a phone conversation, followed by a visit. For reasons I'm not sure of, but that one priest told me may be my calling, I am able to enter a grieving household, pull up a chair, sip some coffee, observe, listen, ask questions that (I hope) will ease the pain, take notes, and recognize the authentic lines when I hear them. Finding the good in this situation is often challenging; it is not always obvious. If I concentrate and am patient, though, it will reveal itself. This usually involves a lot of caffeine.
"After an elder who has been housebound and incapacitated by a stroke for twenty-five years dies, I find time to sit on the sofa and look through family albums with his widow and admire how handsome he was in his World War II uniform and how happy they both looked on that beach vacation the year before he was stricken.
"When twelve-year-old twins lose their mother to cancer, I will quote their father praising them and tell how he plans to take them on a family drive across the country to see their grandparents.
"And perhaps hardest of all, on the snowy winter morning when I meet with the parents and siblings of a young man who drank too much one night and shot himself, I write down how very much he had loved to swim in the lake in front of their summer cabin.
"I understand why you may think that what I do is depressing, but compared to front-page news, most obituaries are downright inspirational. People lead all kinds of interesting and fulfilling lives, but they all end. My task is investigating the deeds, characteristics, occupations, and commitments, all that he or she made of their 'one wild and precious life,' as poet Mary Oliver has called it."
