Omissions

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A few months ago, I wrote my first obituary. It was for my friend Jeff, and I omitted how he had died. I could have written anything, but I simply wrote that Jeff was forty four, loved birds and travel, and I claimed that he cared deeply about life. Now I regret what I didn't write.

Before Jeff died, I never bothered reading obituaries. Afterward, I found myself morbidly scanning them, searching for clues about death. Recently, I came across an honest obituary in which someone wrote about a person who had killed himself because of the horrific mental anguish he had been experiencing on a daily basis. I read this over and over, marveling at the courage it took to admit that this man had killed himself and then to publicly acknowledge the reason why he had ended his life.