Among others were a historian of genocide, a Long Island psychiatrist, a former television network president, a classical music composer, a former Times reporter (“I recognize that it’s somewhat presumptuous of me to assume that The Times will take note of my passing”), a brother of a first lady.
No doubt there was an element of ego in these pitches. But they also spoke to a more universal impulse, I think. People want to be remembered for being more than a name on a headstone. If they can’t live forever, then at least their stories might, in an obituary, a tangible form of an afterlife. An obit may be a last shot at immortality, as frail as that vehicle may be: a yellowing newspaper clipping or, more lastingly now, a lonely URL address surviving in the vastness of the internet, just a click away.
I never heard from most of my correspondents again, and in looking over their submissions recently, I discovered, through web searches, that a good number of them had died. Would we have written their obituaries had we known of their deaths? In most cases, I’m afraid, probably not. Accomplished people though they were, most would not, to their disappointment, have cleared the “newsworthy” bar.
Some submissions, however, did come in handy when we chose to write their obituaries. And at least two of those obits remain on file, as “advances.” As someone who made a living remembering the dead, I’m heartened to know that the subjects of those pieces remain with us, that their stories haven’t ended just quite yet.
And, I’m happy to say, my retirement notwithstanding, neither has mine.
