Obits: guest blog by Jon Obermeyer

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.--Clarence Darrow

I.

You're supposed to read the local obituaries every day to make sure you're not in there.

I lived in Greensboro, North Carolina for 28 years, and my morning ritual (after coffee and a shave) is a scan of the obituaries in the News & Record online edition. On occasion, I will take a look at the Independent in Santa Barbara, where I was born and lived until I was twenty-five years old. I don't bother with the Durham Sun; I hardly know anyone there.

When I worked for the Hearst paper The Chronicle in San Francisco several years ago, I was the project manager for a complete makeover of the obituary page, which we rebranded as "Life Tributes." John Miller led the redesign and I worked with the ad sales department on a repackaging of the obituary product. It was a multi-million dollar business, and the average charge was $1,100 for a print obituary, that came pre-bundled with an online obituary on SFGate.

What astounded me was the Sunday factor. If you died on a Tuesday, the family would purchase a brief death notice for Wednesday and wait to run the full biography obituary on Sunday. Sometimes we had about six pages of obituaries in what is known as the "lean back" edition that you leisurely read on a Sunday.

Even if Giuseppe or Juanita lived (and died) out in Walnut Creek (Rossmore) or Livermore, if they grew up in the City, the old San Francisco families made sure to run a full obituary in the San Francisco Newspaper.

Consider the absolute power of the obituary, as one's final edition on the planet. Woe to the newspaper that messed up an obituary with a typo, or God forbid, the wrong photo. No retraction or refund could possibly undo the dishonor of a gaffe-ridden obituary read by 600,000 souls (print edition); it was like a typo on the tombstone.

And if you were famous, the Op-Ed editors wrote an obituary about you that cost the family nothing at all. What determined famous versus "pay to play" I'll never know, but it was some algorithm or Egyptian hieroglyph that only the graduates of the Stanford Journalism School or Cal are privy to. I'm sure there are many widows and publicists who walked out of 901 Mission Street in a tizz because their beloved or their client did not rate the editorial obituary.

Robin Williams died while I worked at the Chronicle. What I realized with his passing is that there are no more news bureaus anymore. We were the sole source of news for the entire world, Our Managing Editor created a War Room and detailed 18 reporters to Tiburon and Sea Cliff to cover the passing of Mork from Ork (and my favorite, Mrs. Euphengenia Doubtfire.)

II.

Any writer worth his embalming fluid should read the local obituaries religiously. They're an unending source of rich material.

Each obituary is an encapsulated memoir, written on-the-fly, drafted on the backside of a Mel's Diner menu or the mortuary's price list.

I wrote my father's obituary on Labor Day Weekend 2009 in councourse C of the Charlotte airport, as I flew out to Phoenix to meet my sisters to have his body cremated.

I'm fascinated with the process by which grieving family members convene, and the most literate member is deputized as the scribe, plus supporting roles: Uncle Josiah, you fact check, and Cousin Ginny, you proofread.

An obituary is a lovely genre, a prose poem of 300-900 words written in haste and grief: essential facts (birthdate and place); an abridged highlight reel of accomplishments (career, domestic and civic);and for the  outro, a compact genealogy (don't forget the step-grandchildren!)

What incredible material for the writer to use for plotting and characterization!

And you don't really have to ask anyone's permission. It's run in the newspaper and you're not really going to plagiarize anything; most likely you'll adapt it or use it as a starting point for a short shory, memoir or novel.

What intrigues me the most is in the cases of divorced couples, when the former spouse is listed as a survivor, especially if the deceased re-married.

I like to curate names from obituaries as names for characters (for example Merchant LeRoy, Wartha Delano, from the Greensboro paper).

With the Santa Barbara obituaries, I can instantly return to the family names and scenarios of my childhood. Who needs madelienes when you have the Mass for the dead dead notice right there in front of you as a trigger?

And with the Greensboro paper, these are most likely the people that I knew while in my middle-aged years, when I was working at the bank and raising a family. Sometimes it's their parents or siblings passing.

I usually learn something new about the person or family that I did not previously know. Death is the final correction.

III.

Many newspaper editorial departments have a file full of pre-written obituaries for famous people, and when they die, the writer merely updates the facts on the Internet or by phone, and sends the fresh piece over to the copy editor.

In the case of a national celebrity like Robin Williams, with an unexpected and controversial death (how did he die exactly?), the pre-fab obituary gets to "live" on for several news cycles, and maybe a follow-up story in three months.

Given the certainty of one's mortality and the unknown time of its arrival, should you pre-write your own obituary?

James Joyce thought that this was a good idea. He suggested that the perspective of writing your own obituary would, "give you a second wind."

I have not taken this step. I'm single these days, and I will count on my daughters and my friends to come up with a pithy piece on short order, the same way I had to do it when my father passed away. I say, don't hesitate; write the thing before my body goes cold.

And if you get stuck, just crib from the dust jacket of one of my books. I won't mind.

As a memoirist, I've already set out the kindling wood. The three memoirs I've written (so far) are in essence long-form obituaries that will live forever and ever on Amazon, Amen.

Jon Obermeyer is a poet, short story writer and teacher living in Bethesda, NC, near Durham. A native of Santa Barbara, CA, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UNC Greensboro.