April 2023
By Richard Fleming
Growing old is confusing and confounding. And it can be peculiar.
For me, an odd part of the journey is how my curiosity has evolved in a morbid direction. The further I travel down the road, the more interest I have in obituaries. I want to know who is dying, how old they were when they passed, and what led to their demise. Don’t get me wrong, I do not spend oodles of time perusing death announcements. A wide array of other subjects – social, political, medical, cultural, and others – intrigue me more. But I must acknowledge my curiosity about who is dying is expanding.
There are many opportunities to indulge this interest. I receive a quarterly newsletter for retired physicians of The Permanente Medical Group, where I worked for three decades. It offers many interesting articles but I first look to the back of each issue to review who has died. I want to see if I recognize any names. I look at their year of retirement to see how long they lived after hanging up their stethoscope. Only after reviewing the death announcements do I delve into the newsletter’s other pieces.
I also receive a quarterly newsletter from the Topeka High School Historical Society. My approach is the same. I first turn to the “In Memorium” list which is thankfully arranged by year of graduation. I look at who died from my class and from the classes a few years ahead and behind. I usually know some of the names. Only later do I digest the newsletter’s other articles.
Friends contact me on occasion to let me know of a mutual acquaintance who died. And newspapers are always a rich source of obituaries for well-known people – politicians, celebrities, or other notables.
Each time a colleague, classmate, or friend dies, it feels like a chapter of my life has ended. When public figures I grew up with pass on, it feels like part of my past has slipped away.
Deaths of others lead me to ponder the brevity of my stay on planet Earth.
I feel fairly confident I’m not the only senior whose interest in peeking at obituaries is peaking. It is an understandable phenomenon. We older folks live in uncertain times. The Grim Reaper might move into the neighborhood anytime. Once he does, we know he will come knocking on our door some day. This is inevitable. For me, scanning death lists feels like a useful way to audit the Reaper’s activities. It helps me anticipate what lies ahead. I become a one-person Neighborhood Watch program focused on threats to my own mortality.
Deaths carry different implications, depending on the person’s age. When I learn of people in their 90s or older dying, it offers a small measure of comfort. Every death is sad. But when a person succeeded in traveling far down the road, their passing feels less threatening. It offers hope the knock on my door may be decades away. And when people in this age group die, I’m not as curious about the cause of death. “Old age” suffices.
But when I learn of people dying in their 60s, 50s, or even younger, it gives me pause. It makes me nervous. Am I am living on borrowed time? I need to know the cause of death, to understand why the person died at such a young age. If their death was due to an accident, it feels less threatening somehow. But when someone younger than me dies from a medical problem, like cancer or a heart attack, it generates concern. On a strictly rational level, I know the death of a young person has no bearing on when the Grim Reaper will come for me. But it makes me wonder if my odds are worsening. I do a quick review of any symptoms I have recently experienced, just in case.
A few days ago, I was startled by a sharp knock on the front door. Who could it be? Why didn’t they ring the doorbell? But after a moment’s reflection, my anxiety dissipated. I had just read about Al Jaffee, the lead cartoonist for Mad Magazine, dying at age 102. I loved that magazine when I was a teenager. Since Al Jaffee had lived that long, I had no reason to worry about who was knocking. Sure enough, when I opened the door there was a FedEx package lying on the porch, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Events like this confirm my curiosity about obituaries is not that weird after all.
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Thank you for sharing. I feel the same. Many of my younger friends do not understand the aging journey yet. It is difficult to explain to them and most chose not to grasp the challenges I speak of saying, “Oh you have plenty of time ahead” or you will live until you are 100, or you are not that old.” Yes, I am! I find it comforting to express my thoughts and to share those thoughts on aging with others.
This article really touches home with me just a few weeks after my father passing. My father also not a morbid person but an entrepreneur looking for motivated sellers when he would buy or broker real estate would have me pull title from the obituary section of the newspaper every week and write letters to the heirs asking if they wanted to sell or needed representation for their real estate. I was as excited about the deal or possibility of a deal as my dad was, I enjoyed meeting the people and looked forward to helping them with their situation and found solace in being the first to raise my hand to help assist in their time of distress with inevitable needs often unplanned and without a professional in place. The only data I needed to pull from the obituary was the persons name and the city in which they lived. However, for similar reasons that you share Richard, I found myself reading every word for word of the obituary at the moment in that time there seemed nothing more intriguing than their story, where they were born to whom they were born, how they were raised why they moved, what was their profession did they change? Why did they retire? Did they retire and so on perhaps I was looking for answers into my own life? Which direction should I want to go to the alarm from their mistakes? Could I learn from their successes? what is the path that I am going to be good for me or bad for me? How could I relate ? Knowing the time I was taking to read the obituaries was taking away time from the business and even as ambitious as I was, I just couldn’t help myself. Sure the business was important. The relationships we gained and clients we procured to serve their needs benefited everyone involved and in rewarding fashion. But the stories, the human connection and peering into others beginnings to the very ends always gave me meaning beyond what money could ever buy. If, and when I am able to retire in my later years, I can see myself a historian hobbyist, learning of people and entire cultures all over the world from their beginnings to ends.. offering further insight into myself and the expanses of all humanity. Curiosity rules it all.
Spot on, Richard! Good to know others read the back page first.
Loved the “knock on the door” episode! I always check the obits in my alumni magazines.
My Mom was also an avid reader of the Obits (obituholic?). But only those that appeared in the NY Times. In fact, my father held onto their Times subscription for the sole purpose of providing her with newsworthy obituary material. She would not only read the notices , but comment upon many of the recently departed’s accomplishments, relations, and often times, scandals, which weren’t included in the published obit. Her recall was encyclopedic. Even after her stroke she would lie in bed at night, reading with her one working eye, checking to make sure her name had not yet appeared. Alas, though I’ve developed the same morbid habit, I don’t have the perspective she had. Once upon a time, New York was a smaller place.
Love the Neighborhood Watch reference! Doing a bit of obsessing about my own mortality as I wear a Holter monitor for the next 48 hours. I’ve been told it’s probably nothing to be concerned about…but I worry about a family history of heart problems. And I do check those in memorium lists of high school classmates–and hope my longevity standing will be the same as my class standing (4th in class). P.S. Richard–just found a copy of that lovely review you gave of one of my novels in the Physician Newsletter at Kaiser…thanks again.
I do all the same things, Richard! You pretty much nailed it.
I do the same, reading obits quickly, to see how people died , how old they were, et.al.
7 obituaries in one edition of the Topeka Daily Capitol were all men. That gave me pause….
An insightful reflection as always, Richard.
However, I disagree with one paragraph:
‘Each time a colleague, classmate, or friend dies, it feels like a chapter of my life has ended. When public figures I grew up with pass on, it feels like part of my past has slipped away.’
I recently heard Margaret Atwood speak about her latest book, in which she writes more autobiographically than she’s ever done. She was asked whether it feels odd to novelists to write about someone as if they’re alive, while knowing they’ve died. She replied with a challenge:
‘Who is more alive in your thoughts, Shakespeare or that great uncle you hardly ever visit?’
She says it better than I can, but these are my thoughts exactly. When I come across an obit of someone I knew, it shines a light on them in some recess of my memory where they now mainly reside. I’m reminded of how they helped shaped my life–and so for me anyway, they are alive once more.