Offbeat Obituaries Celebrate Loss With Levity (and Brutal Honesty)

Irreverent tributes filled with unvarnished truths and funny anecdotes, which run counter to more somber traditional obituaries, have gained attention for “how alive they feel,” a researcher said.

Before he died at age 90, Maynard Hirshon wrote and paid for his own short obituary, which appeared in The Tampa Bay Times in Florida in 2021.

“I will be remembered for a while by my family, all whose names I am by far too cheap too list and a few friends,” he wrote, as rendered in the published item. “I had a pretty good life, and everybody dies. Bye-bye.”

His quirky, unvarnished death announcement illustrates how obituaries, which were traditionally reported and written by newspaper staff members about notable people and local residents, have evolved.