What Should, Or Shouldn’t, An Obituary Include?

“Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative is a long-held obit trope, its logic coming from both an Emily Post courtesy to the bereaved combined with a generally charitable and understandable ‘don’t kick them when they’re down.’ Of course, obit charity can go overboard (it’s not so hard to imagine some well-meaning basement scribe of the moment writing, ‘No one brought more pride to a disheartened nation in so short a time as did Mr. Hitler’).”