Charlotte Latvala: Clichés in obituaries
More and more these days, I read the obituaries.
First, because I’m seeing people I know – or at least know of – more frequently. It’s the cruel truth of being over 60 years old.
Second, because I’m the sort of person who stays in the movie theater to watch the credits. And obits are basically the movie credits of someone’s life. Everyone deserves a read.
Third? Well, I’m intrigued by how many dazzling personalities recently walked the earth. How many people “lit up a room.” In fact, based on the percentage of recently deceased people who lit up rooms, I’m surprised doctors aren’t recommending everyone start wearing SPF 50 sunscreen indoors, just to ward off the rays of pure sunshine. Sunglasses, too.
I’m not saying anyone’s loved one wasn’t a delightful, charming, and well-liked person, perhaps the owner of a big personality. I’m saying that writing someone “lit up a room” is one of the worst and probably most inaccurate cliches in the English language. (Unless your loved one was an electrician or a pyromaniac, in which case you may want to edit the phrasing to “He lit up many rooms.”)
Cliches are lazy. They are linguistic shortcuts that don’t lead you anywhere, and don’t tell you anything.
For the record: When the time comes, if my obituary says “she lit up a room,” an angry ghost who looks a lot like me will be coming back to haunt the person who wrote it and jab them repeatedly with blue editing pencils.
I’m much more of the “she quietly shrunk into a corner and faded away, possibly making a snide comment about the situation” sort of person. I have never so much as caused a dim flicker of light to appear in a room.
Maybe my obituary would be limited to one word: “Who?”
Or “Oh, her. Meh.”
Or maybe something along the lines of Dorothy Parker’s classic first person quip: “Excuse my dust.”
So, what do you say about the people who didn’t light up rooms? Do you provide honest details?
“Fred was prone to arguing about politics after the third beer, even though everyone could already recite his views verbatim. He had a loud voice and a gravely cough. He didn’t believe in tipping.”
“Carla never missed a chance to criticize the way her daughter was raising the grandkids. She only shopped the sale rack, and despised the color orange. She couldn’t parallel park and never did figure out the new TV remote.”
“Irene considered herself to be a helpful and generous person — or at least told everyone she was. She had a habit of hugging acquaintances, even those whose body language clearly indicated they didn’t want to be hugged. She became irritable if anyone sat in her recliner, making passive-aggressive comments such as: ‘It’s OK; it’s not like I have bad knees or anything. No, no — you sit there.’”
On second thought, maybe they all simply lit up a room.
Charlotte is a columnist for The Times. You can reach her at charlottelatvala@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Charlotte Latvala: Clichés in obituaries
