Obituary Template for a Husband

What belongs in your husband's obituary

You knew him longer and closer than anyone. That is the authority you write from, and the obituary should sound like it. Where a child's obituary for a parent looks up, a widow's obituary for her husband looks across. It can say we. It can say the years were not all easy. It can hold the whole weather of a marriage, and the best ones do.

Start with the meeting. Every long marriage has an origin story, polished by decades of retelling, and it belongs near the top. The dance, the blind date, the broken-down car, the friend who introduced you and took credit ever after. Readers lean into these stories, and telling it one more time, in print, is its own act of love.

Then give the partnership its due, not just the milestones. Anniversaries and children are the frame, but the marriage lived in the daily arrangements. Who drove and who navigated. Who cooked and who told the story of the meal afterward. What you argued about for fifty years without ever really minding. One true line about the shape of your days together will outlast any list of accomplishments.

Do not skip the hard years. A layoff weathered, an illness nursed, a child buried, a bad stretch survived. You need only a sentence, and you decide how much to say. But a marriage that includes its winters reads as true, and other long-married people will recognize yours in it. Some widows also add one private line only he would fully understand. You are allowed that.

A shape you can fill in

An obituary written by a wife tends to follow the marriage in order, with his early life folded in near the top. Here is an order that works. Fill in each line in your own words and skip what does not apply.

Line by line

• His full name, his age, and the date and place of his death
• Where and when he was born, and a line about the boy he was
• How you met, and how he told the story versus how it actually happened
• Your wedding, and the number of years you were married
• His work and what it cost and gave him
• The children you raised, and the kind of father he was
• The daily texture of the marriage, habits, jokes, arrangements, one hard season survived together
• His late years, retirement, grandchildren, what he loved at the end
• Who survives him, beginning with yourself as his wife
• Service details, and where to send flowers or donations

A full example, Eugene

Eugene Robert Halloran, 81, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, died on April 2 with his wife holding his hand, which is how he did most difficult things for the last fifty-seven years.

Gene was born in 1944, grew up over his father's hardware store, and claimed until the end that he could still find anything in that store blindfolded. He met Mary Frances Doyle at a parish dance in 1966. He asked her to dance twice and to marry him within the year, and he liked to say it was the only fast thing he ever did.

They married in 1968. Gene taught history at West Scranton High School for thirty-four years, coached JV baseball, and graded essays at the kitchen table every Sunday night while Mary read beside him. That was the marriage, mostly. Two chairs, one lamp, no place either would rather be.

They raised three children on a teacher's salary and a schedule that never once left a child waiting at a curb. When their son Daniel died in 1994, they carried each other through it, and they do not mind this being said, because pretending it away would leave out the year that made the rest unbreakable.

Gene loved the Phillies, crossword puzzles in ink, and being asked a question he knew the answer to. He is survived by Mary, his wife of 57 years, his children Kathleen and Brian, seven grandchildren, and his brother Jack. A funeral Mass will be held April 7 at 10 a.m. at St. Patrick's Church.

A full example, Marcus

Marcus Anthony Bell, 68, of Charlotte, North Carolina, died on October 14 after two years of an illness he faced the way he faced everything, early in the morning and without complaint.

I met Marcus in 1981 in the checkout line of a Winn-Dixie, where he let me go ahead of him and then followed me to the parking lot to say he regretted it, because now I would leave first. We were married within two years and stayed married for forty-two.

Marcus drove a city bus for eleven years, then built Bell Electric from a toolbox and a used van into a company that put nine men's children through college, counting ours. He was proudest of the counting ours.

Our marriage ran on routines he never once broke. Coffee poured for me before his. The crossword torn in half, him taking the sports page for himself like it was a fair trade. Every Friday, fish, no matter what. When the business nearly went under in 2009, he told me the truth at the kitchen table with the lights off, and we sat in the dark and figured it out. We always figured it out.

He is survived by me, Denise, his wife, who got to leave first after all in nothing but this. He also leaves our daughters Tanya and Renee, six grandchildren, and his sister Paulette. Services will be held October 20 at 11 a.m. at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.