Obituary Time

I was looking up some of the obituaries of people I used to know. A few were surprising, just Googling people I used to know, to find out they'd died. Then a few were ones of people I knew died, but I wanted to see what information there was, since I didn't clip the newspaper.

I notice, just looking around the internet, that obituaries seem to be big business. That would be thanks to our interest in genealogy. It looks like you (or someone) can take an obituary and republish it at your own website, put ads around it, and no one is the wiser. I saw the same obituary at a couple or a few different places.

Some of the ones I was interested in were in an online archive of old newspapers. The problem with the old newspaper site is that, even if they have a billion pages, there's still enormous gaps because there's so many places that aren't on there. And it's hard to search and find something, because the old microfilms don't make reliably searchable files.

Still, if you are diligent, and lucky, you can find some amazing things, not only about the dead people you know but lots of others. I like some of the old, old articles. They've been dead forever, but if you're lucky you can look at an earlier newspaper in the archives and find the story telling about their birth.

Obituaries never go out of date. The information, if it was right in the first place, remains right forever. They had your service at 2 p.m. at such and such funeral home. Etch it in stone.

Time Never Forgets When You Die

Maybe if you were a guy in ancient Egypt time forgot when you died. But these days, time remembers.

I have a copy of a newspaper from 1923, from some dinky town in Missouri. On the front page they have the death notice of some folks. There's one guy ... his death notice straddles the fold, and you can barely make out the line of type there.

But I thought I had it anyway. And I was able to prove I was right ... because time never forgets when you die.

I typed the guy's name in Google and his town and state. Up popped a site that has people's death certificates, images of them. And they happened to have that guy's town and place, the whole thing.

Then right below it was his wife's death certificate, with her father's name, filling in the blank (at least proving what the broken type said), what her last name had been.

Be careful of the circumstances of your death. Don't do anything shameful between now and then. So you can die a clean death. Because ... time never forgets when you die! And how.

Losing Papou

I have Google ads on my blogs. Of course I can't click them, because that's a no-no with Google. If someone sat here clicking their own ads, of course they'd get in trouble with the program. And it'd be unethical, unless you were a very impulsive buyer, who wanted something that everyone was advertising.

But I don't think there's any rule against calling attention to some of them. One I just noticed, at my Grandma Slump blog, is on explaining death to children. This one mentions grandparents and there was another one as well. Probably because the blog is called Grandma Slump. Just what I need, having her read my blog and seeing all this stuff about grandparents dying. At 104, that's the last thing she wants to think about (I assume). But since Grandpa's sitting on a cloud up there, like in the Family Circus comics, maybe she wants to get to him.

The ad says "Comfort your children about loss of a parent or grandparent." That's important. Today's pampered child can't face death like we did when I was a kid. I had a friend whose Mom and Dad rented out their house to a funeral home to keep bodies in their living room, because it was in a different town from the funeral home, and if someone from that town died, that's where they'd be for the visitation. So we'd be over there playing and there might be a dead body in the room too!

I remember the first funeral I went to. I'm still fascinated by the guy and this was almost 45 years ago. In fact I looked up his gravesite picture online just today. True. I plan on visiting his grave when I'm in the area. Because I found the cemetery on Google Earth and now I know how to get there. I think there was less than 10 people at the funeral, including a kid, namely me. In 1965.

Of course since then I've seen a lot of death -- a lot of death. People dropping dead everywhere. After a while you start taking it in stride. It's that first one that sticks with you.

The name of the website is www.losingpapou.com.

I think children can handle death OK. "You know how Puffy your hamster is an angel in heaven? Well, Grandma had to go feed him. And unfortunately she's never coming back."

Mamou has gone to be with Papou.

Henry Gibson Died

The beloved wacky poet of "Rowan & Martin's Laugh In," the great Henry Gibson, died at the age of 73. He had cancer.

We do his little act every once in a while still to this day, if we have some simple poetic line come to us, giving the attribution, "By Henry Gibson" in his plaintive voice.

Everyone has to go, and I'm pretty accepting of death, but it's still tough to hear about someone from years ago passing on. All of our day will come!

UPDATE: I had a terrible sneezing incident happen while typing this post. Read the gory details at this link. For those coming here from there, the original last paragraph is the one starting with "Everyone has to go," meaning the next to the last one is the one starting with "We do his little act." I sneezed Tabasco sauce through my nasal passages. That was crazy. I was thinking all kinds of things, including my many declarations that I will not question God when bad things happen to me. And in this case, true to my word, I didn't. There I was, mourning Henry Gibson's death, and while doing so, could've died myself from choking on Tabasco. Or losing my ability to breathe, except fire.

His Cat, Bull

Interesting detail discovered in an online obituary:

He was preceded in death by his parents; grandparents; and his cat, Bull.

The Day In Death

Larry King didn't know what to do today. First, of course it was to be a tribute to Farrah Fawcett, until it was all trumped by the death of Michael Jackson.

Farrah Fawcett, or as we first knew her, Farrah Fawcett Majors, was very beautiful. Like everyone of a certain age, I remember the famous poster of her from 1973. I never had a copy of it personally but I remember seeing it all the time.

She's been in the news lately as being very ill, but there was good word from her people that her family was able to be with her, etc., and things were going OK on that front. So it wasn't a surprise, but still very sad news to hear she died.

Then Michael Jackson. I've been ambivalent about him in recent years especially. I never really kept up with his music, although I did own the "Thriller" album at the time, and a few other things, various 45s. And I have a couple CDs by him around somewhere. They had the "Dangerous" CD at a thrift store I go to a couple days ago, and to save money I didn't get it. I wish I would've. But I was sort of wishing that before he died. When I went back yesterday it wasn't there anymore, nor was the CD I was hoping would still be there, one of his sister Janet's, the "1814" album.

Michael's been around forever. I remember when the Jackson 5's first album came out in '69.

I was definitely surprised to hear he died ... or at first the rumor, pretty much confirmed reports.

And Then There's Maude

That was a cool show, Maude. I wonder what it'd be like to watch it now. Maybe it wouldn't be so good, like maybe dated.

But anyway, it was a show that I actually watched quite a few times. I don't remember any lines or plots though.

Bea Arthur passed on, aged 86.

Grieving No More

I mentioned Paul Harvey to someone the other day. I asked, "Did you ever listen to Paul Harvey?" And she said, and this is an exact quote, "Yeah, whenever I couldn't help it."

I have to confess, I laughed. Except it seemed like a very weird thing to say since he just died. We try to hold off on humor till the body is at least cold.

In someone case like Paul, though, we're not that emotionally attached. One, he was an older gentleman, 90, I believe. Two, we only heard him on the radio, and really not always by choice. You go to businesses, gas stations, whatever, and they have the radio on, so you hear whatever crap they happen to be playing. In his case, it was meant to be an entertaining spin on the news, which wasn't necessarily very entertaining.

He sounded like someone reading "Grit" outloud. Like an old guy who maybe had too tight underpants. Not exactly footloose. It didn't appeal to me, but when you heard it it was like something distinctive.

Anyway, all the best to his memory. I wanted to use that line she said. Cute.

My Pets Live

Everyday I suspect my pets are going to die. But somehow they keep living.

The cats are going to be 14 this summer. The dog will be 10. The dog's in better shape than the cats, but the cats don't seem terrible. Sometimes I have to help one of the cats get up on a particular thing, where he eats. And he doesn't seem to go upstairs as much as he used to. They're moving slower and acting like their young days are past.

The dog is closer to me, like a constant physical presence. So it's easy to see she's always alive. The cats have their own privacy issues -- I suppose I could say it that way -- so there's pronounced gaps between the times I saw them last and the times I see them next.

If they lie still too long, I'm thinking they're dead.

One of these days it's got to happen. It'll be sad when they die -- which will likely be one only and not together -- but it's not going to be unexpected.

Faking Your Own Death

I haven't looked at the details, but I saw a story about a guy wanted on financial fraud charges who apparently was trying to fake his death by parachuting out of a plane and letting the plane crash. That might actually be worth reading, because, if true, that's wild.

Recall, a lot of people thought Elvis had faked his death. But he would've turned up by now. So it would seem the actual fact was that he died. Whether others have faked this death, it's not a subject I associate with actual cases. Most of the ones who do it are probably just missing person cases who never turn up. Or, like one I heard of last year, they turn up because they are prominent in their new local circles; the case I'm thinking of, I believe the guy ran for mayor in a town, won, then others heard of him or investigated his history.

It would not be impossible, of course, to disappear, but it'd be hard to stay gone. Or hidden. I'm not about to do it ... for many reasons ... I'm not unhappy with my life ... I have family I want to stay in contact with ... and so forth. How, though, would you go about it? One way I would not do it is to fly up in a plane, parachute out, and let the plane crash! Was the idea that the plane would be on fire and burn up the body completely ... I mean completely?

The ideal way would not be to risk your plane crashing and killing people. You should just go away. Or move to another country. Or move to a big city and get a studio apartment, a trench coat, keep your head down, and do little else.

It actually sounds like a drag. What do you do about taxes, Social Security, a will, property, etc.?

Tim Russert

I saw that Tim Russert died and I thought it had to be a joke, a bit of blog snark that wasn't going to be funny. But the context and the links checked out. And so it turned out to be true.

That's unbelievable. He never really looked like a "candidate" for a quick heart attack where they'd be unable to help him. But we only see the outside and he had a moderately vigorous look. And there's no way for us to know how he took care of himself. But it can happen very quickly.

I had a hard time liking his style on "Meet the Press." He'd get someone on there -- if it was someone I liked -- and invariably go for the "gotcha" stuff. "You said in 1992...but now in 2004 you say..." And in the Democratic debates he was relentless with that same stuff.

But a couple times I caught parts of his program on MSNBC that obviously had a more laid-back vibe, everyone very casual, a totally black background, laughing, camaraderie, telling stories, seeming to enjoy politics as a thing with a heritage to appreciate. He was more likable in that setting, that's for sure.

Tim Russert was definitely knowledgeable and made an impact in politics and journalism.