Obituaries

Does anyone else read the obituaries to see the ages of those who have died and read the total obituary when someone is young or around your age? I do:-(. Sometimes I imagine myself in their shoes.....dead.

I very often look at the obituaries on line in the area where I came from to see if anyone I knew had passed away. I rarely ever see anyone I know. But I would find out that someone I knew had died and it never made it to the obituary. What's really weird is that I go to a web site of a funeral home in the small town I came from; and I would not know anyone in the list of names.

Sometimes I would read about someone in full if they are my age or younger. I had gone through depression in the past, that seeing people in the obituary would be like making the honor roll. It was like I wish it were me.

As you get older inevitably the obituaries are what you read first , I saw my parents do it and thought it daft , then I grew up got older and all the things I didn't understand as a kid suddenly made perfect sense , obits , public television, documentaries, voting,social security, medicare, the list goes on , when I would ask them about they would say "one day these things will have meaning" and they were right as i get older i care more about how things go in the world , who comes in and goes out of it ,and what the next generation has to look forward to .

I read the obit list (as well as the news headlines) in the daily e-mails my hometown newspaper sends out, and I read the full obituary of someone I knew...maybe every week or so. However, I also watch for those of people who had lived into the eighties and beyond. Then, I also receive Patriot Guard notices for funerals of veterans where I live now, and with those I am mostly interested in the ones for vets who were near my own age...and a couple of years ago I spent a lot of time taking photos of veterans' nearby gravesites and either making or adding to their memorials at Find-A-Grave.

I do this infrequently but I look at the obituaries of young people, people my age and very old people. It seems every old person 90 and above have an interesting life story.

I also read the obituaries to try to guess those that have died by suicide. Sometimes an obituaries give the reason cancer/ old age, but occasionally they will say that the person lost a fight with depression. Then I look at the family, do they know hope much the person suffered, is it easier on them knowing that the person did have depression and fought so hard? Thank you for your responses.

I often wonder that myself. I have much respect for those that come out and say they lost their fight with depression. It's very rare. Sometimes I also wonder about drug overdoses the way opioid abuse is increasing although I don't live in a city with a particularly bad problem. I remember years ago seeing a beautiful young mother's obit and wondering what happened. It was years later when I was going through weight loss surgery that I found out she and her husband both had gone through it together and while he was fine, she passed from complications. Very sad and put me off going through that particular type of weight lost surgery. You never know.

I have done so before and for the same purpose.

when I lived in my old area, yes.

I always read the local newspaper, and they were always at the back.

I don't anymore though.

sort of learned it was an unhealthy habbit (at least for me)

Unhealthy habit for me too.

One of you then may have read my dad's obituary... Courier Times... worked for Senior Living at Forest Ridge as a floor technician. Barely 51 years old. I still have a hard time believing he is really gone, even though we picked up his ashes today. It feels more like he is at work or something...

My husband reads them frequently. We had a friend who was kinda grumpy and he got mad at us (we emailed each other several times a day) he said he had work to get done so if we didn't hear from him he was busy. He went to bed that night and died of a massive heart attack. We emailed him nothing. He lived alone and finely one of his neighbors called the police and they did a welfare check on him almost a month after he was last heard from. Because he had no children or kids etc it took months for his body to be release and creamated. The way I found out and I alerted our friends was when his obituary finely got posted months after his death. I was shocked

Sad very sad

OOOh, that sounds scary to me. I'm feeling like I am similar to that guy. I never got married and no kids. And I live by myself. I hope that I don't die that way. Sometimes I get the feeling that I will.

I try to watch it with being a grump. I tend to be very nice in nature as much as I can. When people get on the wrong side of me then I'm not a real nice person. I'm very sensitive and my feelings get hurt easily. Also as I've gotten older I feel like I am not as nice as I used to be.

I'm very sorry about your dad, 51 is very young. I don't mean to belittle anyones death by reading the obituaries and posting this thread I'm just obsessed with death and wish mine would come sooner rather than later.

Take care!