Offbeat Obituaries Celebrate Loss With Levity (and Brutal Honesty)

Irreverent tributes filled with unvarnished truths and funny anecdotes, which run counter to more somber traditional obituaries, have gained attention for "how alive they feel," a researcher said. Before he died at age 90, Maynard Hirshon wrote and paid for his own short obituary, which appeared in The Tampa Bay Times in Florida in 2021. "I will be remembered for a while by my family, all whose names I am by far too cheap too list and a few friends," he wrote, as rendered in the published item. "I had a pretty good life, and everybody dies. Bye-bye." His quirky, unvarnished death announcement illustrates how obituaries, which were traditionally reported and written by newspaper staff members about notable people and local residents, have evolved. As newsroom staffs have shrunk and newspapers have turned to paid obituaries, the way has been paved for more offbeat obituaries that can be funny and brutally honest. The rise of paid obituaries may give people a sense of leeway to cut loose, said Kristen Hare, the director of craft and local news at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Fla. "Paid obits are still big business for newspapers, but funeral homes and publishers, including Legacy.com, have made it easier to skip them by submitting an obit directly to them," she said.