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People die at all ages and for all kinds of reasons. If your curiosity is morbid, you can probably hunt around for it. If you have respect for others privacy, y
by officemonkey 15y ago
People die at all ages and for all kinds of reasons. If your curiosity is morbid, you can probably hunt around for it. If you have respect for others privacy, you'll accept the information given.
Obituaries should celebrate a life, not explain a death.
- alister 15y agoIt is not unhealthy or insensitive (which is what "morbid" means) to know cause of death. Knowing cause of death has value for public discussion about policy, health, and medicine. Even if it's something like suicide or AIDS, we'll know that we should be paying more attention to preventing those. IMDB and Wikipedia always list cause of death when it's known. Are they morbid too? The obituary writer is free to write it any way he wants, but you seem to be arguing that it's wrong to include the cause of death. The reason we're reading this particular obituary at all is because we want to know more about the person. How is a list of surviving relatives, his home town, or age any more relevant or important to mention than cause of death?
- bryanlarsen 15y agoThe cause of death is important to know in the aggregate: 1 person died last year in the United States from alien laser beams. In the specific, it's morbid, yes.
- abalashov 15y agoObituaries should celebrate a life, not explain a death. I agree, but I don't think mentioning or making an allusion to a cause of death and then going on to talk about the person's life for 98% of the text really undermines that mission.
- officemonkey 15y agoI suppose that decision is up to the obituary writer.