Obituary: A Reality Check

Bitter.

That's how I feel about the whole process of publicizing a formal obituary in the newspaper.  It's expensive enough to die and have all the funeral, final expenses and medical bills to settle and then to find out that to publish the obituary that I wrote, in the San Francisco Chronicle would cost about $1400 is just ridiculous.  There certainly is some profiteering going on somewhere in that whole process.  I cant help but wonder of the families stratified socio-economically lower than my own, how do they get by publishing their own obituaries?  Simple.  They don't.

Perhaps these sentiments arise from the fact that I was unable to fundraise the donation amount needed to publish the obituary.  So, I underestimated the task of fundraising the amount to publish.  But in this, I've come to a realization that there are probably a good number of people who have loved ones that aren't publicized in the obituary column– due to lack of funding.  Those that have, they publish.  Those that don't have, like our family, they don't.

I want to re-spell it "o-bitch-uary".  Because that's what it really is.  Shenanigans.  An opportunity to make a buck from the bereaved or the beloved. Sometimes, like in our case, that just isn't possible and it would help that there were places where you can publish an obituary where you can get a square deal.

For the meantime, I haven't totally given up on the idea of having an obituary.  I'm just going to publish it on a free internet site in tribute and memoriam to a great man. My Dad.