Lemondrop

One of the first items in my newspaper's style guidelines for obituaries reads as follows: "We use the word 'died' in obits."

We don't say "passed away," "met his maker," "went off to be with the Lord," "'was promoted to glory" or anything like that in the free obits. (So much for my shameless hope of going "to that Anthropologie sale in the sky.")

It seems reasonable enough to me. From a practical perspective, space is limited on the obits page, and four letters do the job. From a more philosophical viewpoint, it's arguably the only description that is correct. Regardless of what someone believes happened to their late Aunt Millie -- she went to heaven; she went to hell; she was reincarnated as an endangered sub-species of penguin -- she did, at the very least, die.

Unfortunately, hearing or reading this is something that many people have a problem with. One woman in particular was very disturbed that "died" would appear in the same sentence as her late spouse's name.

Click here to read what happened ...

Apparently rather pressed to accomplish a lot in one day, she arrived at the newspaper offices via the hearse her late husband's casket was actually resting in at the time. So riding around in hearses: fine. Using the word "died:" confrontational, to say the least.

On the flip side, people are pretty comfortable with tossing out melodramatic death references in every other context. I "could kill" for a good martini. My friend "just about died" when her hot neighbor caught her in her stained Snoopy pajamas while she was in the middle of a late-night tampon run. Hannah Montana will "be the death of me."

"Of course people can take it in a casual context," one of my friends once said to me over martinis that were, for sure, to die for. "It's not actually about death, then."

"Okay, but it gets really hard to write an obit in a way that's 'not about death,'" I said. "Besides, I'm just following orders."

"Well, what would you want it to say if it were talking about you?"

"I don't really care what verb is used," I said evasively.

After I'm gone, I hope people will spend as few syllables as possible on my death and spend more time talking about all the verbs I accomplished during my life.