Obituary Template for a Wife

What belongs in your wife's obituary

Many men discover, sitting down to write this, that their wife was the family's historian, and that the person who would have known all the dates is the person the dates are now about. Start by gathering what she kept. Her address book, the calendar on the kitchen wall, the birthday card list, the photo albums she labeled in her own hand. She has, in a sense, already drafted her obituary in those pages. Your job is to read them.

Write about the life you built rather than the events you attended. A wedding is one day. The marriage was the forty years of Tuesdays. What did she do first every morning. What did the house sound like when she was in it. What did she always say when you were leaving, and what will you do now at that hour. The obituary does not need many of these details. It needs two or three, chosen honestly.

Then name the invisible work. In most long marriages there is a whole economy of care that ran through her hands. She remembered every niece's birthday. She noticed when a neighbor was struggling. She kept peace between relatives who never knew she was keeping it. This labor was real, it was skilled, and it almost never got named while she was alive. The obituary is your chance to name it in public, once, correctly. Many widowers say this is the paragraph that finally made them cry, and the one they are gladdest they wrote.

Give her a self beyond the household too. Her work, paid or not. Her talents, her stubbornness, the things she loved that had nothing to do with you. You are describing a whole woman, not just what she did for everyone else, and she would want you to get that balance right.

A shape you can fill in

An obituary written by a husband usually moves from her beginnings, through the meeting and the marriage, into the daily life she made, and ends with what she held. Here is an order that works. Fill in each line and skip what does not apply.

Line by line

• Her full name, including her maiden name, her age, and the date and place of her death
• Where and when she was born, and a line about the girl she was
• How you met, and the number of years you were married
• Her work and her gifts, the things that were hers alone
• The children, and the kind of mother and grandmother she was
• The daily life you built, two or three honest details of your ordinary days
• What she held that no one saw, the birthdays, the peacemaking, the noticing
• Who survives her, beginning with yourself as her husband
• Who went before her, if you choose to name them
• Service details, and where to send flowers or donations

A full example, Margaret

Margaret Anne Sullivan Reyes, 76, of Tucson, Arizona, died on May 9, at home, in the bed her husband had moved to face the window because she liked to watch the doves come to the wall in the morning.

Peggy was born in Boston in 1949, the youngest of six and the loudest, a fact she disputed her whole life against overwhelming testimony. She came west in 1972 to teach second grade for one year and stayed fifty-three, largely because Eduardo Reyes asked her to dance at a colleague's wedding and then, having no further plan, asked her again.

They were married forty-nine years. Peggy taught school for three decades, and long after she retired, grown men in line at the Safeway would say Mrs. Reyes and stand up straighter.

It is her husband writing this, and he wishes to put on record what he did not fully see until these last weeks. Peggy remembered every birthday in two families and three time zones. She knew which neighbor needed a casserole before the neighbor did. She kept an entire family gently in tune, the way a good teacher keeps a classroom, so quietly that everyone believed the harmony was natural. It was not natural. It was Peggy.

She is survived by Eduardo, her husband, their children Michael, Susan, and Carmen, eight grandchildren, and her sister Eileen. A Mass will be held May 15 at 10 a.m. at St. Cyril of Alexandria. The doves still come to the wall.

A full example, Delores

Delores Jean Hartley, 81, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, died on November 2, six days after her 81st birthday, for which she had, as always, organized her own party rather than trust anyone else to do it right.

Dee was born Delores Jean Kramer on a farm outside Vinton in 1944. She could drive a tractor at ten, cut hair by sixteen, and ran her own shop, the Curl Up, on First Avenue for thirty-one years. Half the town got its news there, and the other half got discussed.

She married Gordon Hartley in 1965 after he came in for a haircut he did not need, then came back the next week for another. He has since admitted this. They were married sixty years and never once left the house angry, mostly because Dee would stand in front of the door.

Gordon, writing this, wants it known what the house ran on. Dee kept the checkbook, the garden, the church funeral committee, and the peace. She sent cards for every occasion including some she invented. She knew the anniversary of every widow's loss in their congregation and called each one on the day, every year, without ever mentioning it at home. He found the list this week, in her desk, in her good handwriting. He intends to keep making the calls.

Dee is survived by Gordon, their sons Dale and Kenneth, five grandchildren, and two great-granddaughters she pronounced perfect. Services will be held November 7 at 10 a.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church.