and finally The sensitive art of writing an obituary


Chris Proctor no longer wants the gig


I


was 22 when I decided I wanted to write obits for a living. It was a major change of heart because up to that point I had scorned them, believing they were irrelevant to me as they


were about people who had died. My opinion changed the day I was stuck in an airport in South America. I had nothing to read and the shops surrounding the waiting area were devoid of anything in English. Nothing. Nada. For me, a combination of no reading matter and a


long wait in an airport is a definition of utter hell. I’d have read anything. I proved this by perusing pages of El Mercurio, a paper not only loathsome but also written in a language I didn’t understand. But at least it was reading. Even physical page turning and print examination, even when the words are incomprehensible, is better than nothing. After a few hours my eyes alighted upon a human with an English language newspaper on the other side of the disinfected acreage. It wasn’t a real paper – it was a US effort – but at least it was written in (a form of) English. I scurried over and parked up next to the fellow, an archetypal businessman, and I begged. Could I have some of his paper? Any bit would do. Had he finished any pages? Could I watch him read? He was of taciturn demeanour, relenting only


when it was obvious I was unbalanced. Wordless, he pulled two pages from his periodical and, looking the other way, passed them to me. It seems surprising now but, in that moment, I loved him. One page was obituaries. I knew none of the deceased but, in my condition, it mattered not. I devoured each entry with a gentleman’s relish. Yes, my assessments may have been coloured by


my reading-deprived state. But I felt these words were the ultimate pinnacle of both literature and reportage. They were condensed short stories that could be


savoured then expanded upon: each provided the bare bones of a gripping tale I could invent for myself. Their form was classically perfect, containing a beginning, a middle and an end.


Every one was a potted social history. I came to


know more about these people than I did my work colleagues. I was acquainted with their place and date of birth, their old schools and who they had worked for. I knew their interests and outlook on life, the names of their spouses and offspring. I knew intimate details of their physical condition before they featured on the obit page. I was determined to become an obituary writer on


a national. It is a measure of my relentless ambition and single-minded drive that I didn’t. But I once met a bloke at a party who did obits for the Independent. This was a fortuitous encounter as I happened to


be engaged in a slurred discussion about whether Greta Garbo was dead. Now we had an expert to hand. Was the great actress still with us? He had no idea. He confessed that he had


written, edited and updated the obituaries of so many people that he now thought everyone was dead. I mean, he’d read their obits. He’d updated Her Majesty’s so frequently he couldn’t believe she was still on postage stamps. Eventually I lost my


fervour for obit writing, a state that coincided with my realisation no one was going to give me a job. But then last month I achieved my ambition, which demonstrated the truth of the maxim that you should be careful what you wish for. I got to write an obit in a national because one of my oldest friends died. The experience was a revelation. Three of us


pulled in different ways as 400 words were bartered, edited and reviewed. I realised that I’d written a tribute to a man, not an obit for an academic. My friend’s wife, an artist, wanted a portrait of a photographer, not a list of appointments and exhibitions. And the obits editor wanted 400 words conforming to a predetermined formula. Add to this the fact that two of us were feeling deeply emotional, and there you have it: chaos that ground its way towards order – the journalist’s skill in a nutshell. I don’t want to write obits any more. I don’t


even want to read them, in case I spy familiar names. It’s a comfort that at least I’ll be spared my own.


26 | theJournalist


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