How to Write an Obituary

Writing an obituary is one of the most meaningful things you can do to honour a person's life — and one of the most daunting tasks to sit down with in the midst of grief. Approach it as an act of love, not a test. There is no perfect obituary; there is only an honest one.

What to include

A good obituary weaves together the factual and the personal — the life lived and the person who lived it. Consider including:

• Full name and any names they were known by
• Dates and places of birth and death
• Family — who they are survived by, and who preceded them in death
• Career and education — particularly if it was central to their identity or community
• Passions and interests — what they loved, how they spent their time, what made them themselves
• Character — a sentence or two about who they were, how they made people feel, what their presence meant
• Service details — if a public funeral or memorial is planned
• Donation wishes — if the family requests charitable donations in lieu of flowers

Getting the tone right

The best obituaries feel like the person. If they had a dry sense of humour, let that show. If they were quiet and steady, let the writing reflect that steadiness. You are not writing a formal document — you are writing a portrait.

Try to include at least one specific, concrete detail that makes this person distinct: the garden they spent every Sunday in, the way they always had a pot of tea ready, the fact that they never missed a grandchild's school play. These particulars are what turn an obituary into a memory.

If you are struggling to start, try writing down three things you will miss most about them, and three things you hope people remember. The obituary often lives somewhere in that space.

Practical tips

• Ask for help. Gather information from family members, particularly for details about earlier life you may not know well. This can also be a healing process of shared remembering.
• Write a first draft without worrying about length or perfection. You can always cut, but you cannot recover what you did not write down.
• Read it aloud. This is the best way to find the moments that feel stiff or formulaic and replace them with something more natural.
• Check the facts. Dates, spellings of names, and survivor details should be confirmed carefully.
• Consider the audience. A newspaper obituary has different constraints from a tribute printed in a funeral programme or shared on a memorial website.

An obituary does not need to capture everything. It needs to honour the essence of a person and give those who knew them a moment of recognition: yes, that is who they were. That is enough.