Saturday, March 09, 2013

Dead Man Walking

I know I've mentioned before that I read the local obituaries.  It was a habit I picked up 30 years ago when I worked on an Oncology floor in the hospital. 

The Columbus Disgrace Dispatch would put what the person died of and which hospital.  Cleveland papers don't do that.  But Cleveland puts in pictures, which Columbus never did (or at least used to). 

I have often joked, both to 710 and my mother, about the pictures in the Plain Dealer.  You think this young man or woman passed away only to see they're 87 or 71.  I've never understood the reasoning of putting in the picture you took at 24. 

I suppose that wasn't the joke.  

My thing was, that when I died, I'd put a picture of when I was 10 in the paper. 

Maybe it wasn't so funny that some 80 year old did just that only last week.  The bastard stole my bit. 

It took less than a week for that dude to be one-upped.  



The obit is sad enough that, if these aren't typos, the woman carried a dead baby for three days, but the need for the sonogram image?  Really???

There is only one way for me to top this now. Clearly when the time comes, I'll have to have a picture of a singular spermatozoa.  Or a Hershey bar in my father's back pocket. 



Song by: Mary Chapin Carpenter

6 comments:

anne marie in philly said...

that sux; WHY would ANYONE want to put THAT in the paper? no shame, I guess.

PS - I also read the obits; sometimes I find people I actually know!

Jonny said...

Mmmmmm....Hershey bar.

Jeffrey said...

Down here in Alabama, obits are big deals; everybody needs to know! Apparently.

My favorite typo in an obituary was that "he pasted" - I think they were trying to say, "he passed", which is a common colloquialism in these hyere parts.

I love the language:
"Called Home to be with the Lord"
"Jesus called and she answered"
Gone go be in the bosom of Jesus"
"Made his Transition" is another goodie - we have a large Church of Religious Science here.

And, yes, they do the young-picture-for-old-fart thing here, too. It's jarring.

Dith said...

I like "Home Going" Celebration as euphemism for funeral.

What's with the Hershey bar?

cb said...

I'm gonna put a picture of semen as mine...

Erik Rubright said...

That's just... creepy. Although not as creepy as me wanting to hang fetuses on my Yaksmas tree at work.