Allen wrote: > > Information for obituaries is usually furnished in a time of great > stress and sorrow. When it became obvious that my wonderful mother-in- > law had only a few days to live, I quietly prepared an obituary for her, > including all the usual information you would expect to find in one > except for the date of death and memorial service, including the > newspapers that it should be sent to, and I also checked all the data > for accuracy. When she died, I took it to the funeral home when we went > to the funeral home to make arrangements for her burial and memorial > service. (In the US, obituaries are usually sent to the papers by the > funeral home.) I handed copies to my wife and brother-in-law for their > approval, and they were very grateful that they didn't have to come up > with all that information on the spur of the moment. I would suggest > that others do this also, when death is expected and imminent. > > Incidentally, my files are full of obituaries in which female relatives > are identified as Mrs. John Smith, Mrs. Bill Brown, Mrs. Franklin > Johnson and so forth; sometimes that also served as the only > identification of the dead person. Very frustrating, and in my opinion > just one more example of how women were belittled in earlier times. All > the women in my family were worthy of being recognized as themselves, > but too few gained that respect. > > Allen I also prepared an obituary for my mother shortly before she died, and gave it to the funeral home - and still managed to misspell the nickname (and name that most of her friends know her by) of one of my aunts <grin>. But, the funeral home didn't use my copy - they copied it onto a form that was then sent to the newspaper - and it's the newspaper's policy to charge for everything longer than a brief death announcement. As an amateur genealogist, there was no way that I was going to settle for something so simple and sparse, especially since my mother had 8 living siblings at the time of her death. But whenever you see an obit that's lacking family information, it could be because of cost considerations, and not because the rest of the family didn't know the names of relatives. On a similar note, the information for the death certificate is usually taken at this time, too, and it's not uncommon for the grieving family to get names wrong, or be unable to remember grandma's maiden name (provided they ever knew it). Cathy