Obituaries usually follow a fairly standard template: sadly missed, beloved husband/wife/father/mother/child, and so on. Round it up with a few homely anecdotes, and you’re done.
Then there are the people who just say, “f- that: I’m telling it like it was!”
For instance, the children of Kathleen Dehmlow, who died in 2018 in Minnesota, were upfront: their late mother “will not be missed”. Those northern folk are said to be brutally honest, after all. When Mommy Dearest gets knocked up by Uncle Lyle and shoots through, they’re gonna tell the world about it.
“She abandoned her children, Gina and Jay, who were then raised by her parents,” her obituary said. “She will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her.”
But Dehmlow sounds almost a saint, compared to Leslie Ray Charping, who died in 2017: “29 years longer than expected and much longer than he deserved”, according to his obituary.
They at least conceded that he was “surprisingly” intelligent… and that’s about it. Otherwise, “he possessed no redeeming qualities.” As his clearly-not-grieving family recall, “he lacked ambition and motivation to do anything more than being reckless, wasteful, squandering the family savings and fantasizing about get rich quick schemes. Leslie’s hobbies included being abusive to his family, expediting trips to heaven for the beloved family pets and fishing, which he was less skilled with than the previously mentioned.”
Ouch.
Ol’ Leslie Ray might have made a good match for Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick, who died just a few years earlier, in 2013:
“She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible. While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit.”
But not all obituaries are so bitter, even if they don’t follow the standard template.
Michael “Flathead” Blanchard, who died in Colorado in 2012, was clearly what we call in Australia a “deadset legend” – and his family wanted the world to know it.
“Mike wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors’ orders and raising hell for more than six decades. He enjoyed booze, guns, cars and younger women until the day he died.”
It sure could have been a worse life: “So many of his childhood friends that weren’t killed in Vietnam went on to become criminals, prostitutes and/or Democrats”. Anything but that!
Mike’s obituary also contains the cryptic reminder that “Baba Yaga can kiss his butt”.
Of course, most of us, death being what it is, have to rely on our family or friends to write our obituary. Aaron Joseph Purmont, who felt the hand of death on his shoulder for some time, wasn’t taking any such chances.
So he wrote his own obituary, which included the revelation that he died peacefully at home on November 25 after complications from a radioactive spider bite that led to years of crime-fighting and a years-long battle with a nefarious criminal named Cancer, who has plagued our society for far too long. Civilians will recognise him best as Spider-Man, and thank him for his many years of service protecting our city”.
Purmont also included the startling revelation that he was survived by his first wife, Gwen Stefani.
As befitting the passing of a superhero-in-disguise, Purmont also left a legacy for his infant son: “who will grow up to avenge his father’s untimely death”.
With that, I shall leave you to ponder the life of Chan Holcombe, who passed away in Arkansas in 2011. Given that he was a lifelong Arkansas native, it seems appropriate that his obituary should note that he was “born July 14, 1939 in a Log Cabin” and “was circumcised with his Dad’s pocketknife”.
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