Obituaries —the long and the short of them

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/02/2009 (6055 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT’S probably not known when the first obituary was published, but the shortest death notice in history may have been written in Winnipeg.

All it said, or was supposed to have said, was: VIC DIED.

  Funeral director Neil Bardal said Vic was a local embalmer who told him before he died 25 years ago that he wanted his obitu­ary to be just those  two words and not a centimetre long­er.

“He went on the assumption that those who knew him would know all they needed to know with just those two words. He felt quite strongly about it.”

Bardal said he believes Vic got his wish, but the passage of time has a way of playing tricks on the mind and he wasn’t quite sure anymore if the news­papers of the day went along with the deceased’s wishes. It was around the time Vic died that obituary writing changed in the country, but more about that later.

  I know what Bardal means about time and memory. Thirty years ago, I was a cub reporter for the Dauphin Herald, where I did just about everything ex­cept sweep the floor, but maybe I did that, too. It’s been a long time.

  I remember looking forward to Thursday afternoons because that was obituary day when I was expected to write death notices for all the people who had died in our coverage area. I enjoyed writing obituaries because I found many of the stories interesting and it was a nice break from tracking down town councillors, school trustees, farmers and store managers for their opinions on the problems of the day.

The Dauphin Herald wanted editor­ial control over obituaries, which are normally managed exclusively by a newspaper’s classified advertising de­partment. The paper didn’t charge for death notices, but it insisted on writing them to ensure they were factually cor­rect, consistent in style, and not overly sentimental.

As I recall, I sometimes had to call relatives to clarify a fact or two. I wrote the obits in simple, plain language — well, as plain as I could, since plain writing isn’t that easy.

  Relatives would send in pages of handwritten notes about the deceased, often long stories of tough living on the fringes of civilization.

  I remember one story about an elder­ly man who died in the same house he was born. He had served in the First World War, joined by his older brother who enlisted to look after his adventur­ous sibling. The brother was killed on Nov. 11, 1918, the last day of the war.

I can’t recall, however, if we allowed that kind of information in our obitu­aries, or if it was considered extran­eous information. I then started to won­der if I was recalling other parts of the story correctly.

So I tracked down my old editor and part owner of the Herald, Ryan Kus­tra, who left the newspaper business 20 years ago, and asked him about our editorial policy on obituaries. Did we really want editorial control over obitu­aries? “Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “It’s kind of silly when you think about it.”
 

He reminded me that the policy changed around the time I left in 1979. That’s when the Herald started char­ging for obituaries and allowing people to write their own stories. Kustra also couldn’t recall if I had to cut the obits to a prescribed length or what the rules were about war service, love of pets and children, volunteer work, garden­ing and so on. It’s only been 30 years, but obviously enough time to dissolve some of our memories.

  But back to Vic.

He would have worked in the funeral industry at a time when obituaries were merely death notices. Their intent, as Bardal reminded me, was to tell read­ers when the funeral was being held and to provide enough information so that old neighbours and school friends could identify the deceased as someone they once knew.

A few weeks ago, my thoughtful wife dragged home a smelly old copy of the Winnipeg Tribune (Sept. 13, 1979) that she picked up in a pawn shop or some similar establishment. She thought I would be pleased because I once worked at the Trib, but I didn’t feel sentimental at all and, in fact, I didn’t even want to touch the filthy rag. I was about to throw it in the garbage, but for some reason I broke down and started leafing through its yellowing pages.

  Eventually (newspapers were bigger then), I made it to the obit section. Sure enough, it was full of the kind of obitu­aries that Vic would have liked. Most of them were just one or two paragraphs long, and there wasn’t a hint of senti­mentality in any of them. There were no photographs.

Times change and so have obituaries. Bardal said he believes it was in the early 1980s when people started ask­ing for longer stories about their loved ones. By the 1990s, they were including photographs. There’s nothing wrong with the trend, he said, noting the long obituaries actually seem to comfort some people.

“Everyone has their own story, not just the mayor and his friends, and these stories are often interesting,” Bardal said, adding people are usually more concerned about the cost of an urn or a coffin than the price of pub­lishing a lengthy obituary for multiple days, which isn’t cheap.

  Bardal said he thought the trend might be linked to ego and the rise of the individual and decline of the church, but he wasn’t quite sure of all the sociological factors.

Did Vic see the new trend coming and was he tr ying to make a point?  Probably not, but I know one thing: He deserved a longer obituary and maybe I’ll write it one day, on a Thursday afternoon, for old time’s sake.