A common defense among obituary-fanciers such as myself is that the obit is not about death at all. It is about life. This is true since an article about the condition of deadness would make for turgid reading at best.
Tom RachmanThe training of a journalist, of working with words for thousands of hours, is extraordinarily useful for a fiction writer.
Tom RachmanWe enjoy this illusion of continuity and we call it memory. Which explains, perhaps, why our worst fear isn't the end of life, but the end of memories
Tom RachmanYou know, there's that silly saying 'We're born alone and we die alone' -it's nonsense. We're surrounded at birth and surrounded at death. It is in between that we're alone.
Tom Rachman