Preoccupied with Death

After reading yesterday’s entry you may wonder why I read the Obit section? I have a good reason, I promise. By good, I mean a reasonable one. Not a crazy excuse, or some weird compulsion. A perfectly reasonable reason.

I read it to make sure no one around my age (or my parents’ age) died.

If they did, I want to know why. I don’t like it when young people die and I’m offered no explanation.

You see, if there is an explanation of the death I can easily convince myself that “it could never happen to me.” If the obit says, “Bill died of a sudden illness” that’s not good enough. I can get sick. More appropriate would be, “Bill died after a brief illness caused by repeatedly injecting himself with heroin.” I’m not going to start using heroin. Therefore, I will not die.

See, perfectly reasonable.

Which leads me to another thought. Shouldn’t newspapers be required to tell us why people died? Especially young people. Put a cap on it at, say, 50 years old. If there is a sudden rash of dead 30-somethings I think I have a right to know if they died of cancer, a mass cult suicide, or individual car accidents.

When we lived in Paducah, KY the local paper (The Paducah Sun) did that. If someone died in a newsworthy manner (which to me every death under 50 is, if not newsworthy, at least worthy of mention) the paper would insert into the obituary a cross reference to the story. “Bill Smith, 35, died unexpectedly June 30 (see story on B-1)…” I appreciated that. It made the untimely deaths of others much less troubling.

Is it really too much to ask that the local paper help to ease my fears about the death? I think not.