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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP

With the Internet, these days, less is more. All the obit information is printed on multiple websites on the Internet, and it will stay there forever. I could see where before people may give more details in the obituary, but now it seems better and safer to just be vague.[/quote]

I think all of this needing to know how someone died is an immature response to the fact that death sometimes comes unexpectedly, anyone can die at any moment for no rhyme or reason. One minute you are here, the next you are gone. That’s hard to reconcile but it’s true. Spending so much energy into figuring out how someone died, reasoning that if it was an overdose it was that persons fault, suicide, oh it couldn’t happen to me- that’s just an intense discomfort with death. It’s also intensely lack of empathy and selfish for people who are grieving.[/quote]

Immature? My dude, telling the story of deaths is one of the most human things we do. [/quote]

There’s “telling the story” when you are a family member or a close friend and have direct knowledge, and then there is gossiping and speculating and spreading rumors. Gossiping and spreading rumors is a rather human thing to do, but some of us try to do more good than harm in this world.

Why do you struggle so much when something is simply none of your business?[/quote]

I have a feeling it's the same person who pretends to be an obituary writer who keeps insisting over and over again it's horrible and rude and intrusive to want to know how someone died. Come on, it's one of the most natural human instincts because it shows an interest in our fellow humans, community, family, neighbors. Death rituals and how we approach deaths is among the oldest, if not the oldest, forms of human behaviors. Telling us to MYOB is not the kind thing to do. It's actually distinctly unhuman.

And you are also imposing some sort of weird and ridiculous binary. Apparently if I say quietly to a neighbor upon hearing of a death, "oh, how awful, how did he/she pass away?" I am only a nasty gossiping person? Ironically, by not being more clear on the cause of deaths only leads to more of your dreaded "gossip."

Meanwhile, in the real world, not someone's fictional world of manners in her head, I have parents in their late 70s with a large circle of friends in their 70s into 80s, everyone talks about causes of deaths all the time. It's normal for them. 
[/quote]

And that is fine if the family wants to share. But that’s the whole point—the obituary is what the family wants to share publicly. If a neighbor who isn’t super close to the family is talking a few weeks later to the widow or what have you, the widow may choose to share that information even though they aren’t super close. That is where the humanity, the natural connection, comes into the picture. That’s organic, that’s the widow choosing to open up to someone in person. There is a huge difference between those organic conversations and the formal, public, anyone-can-see-it newspaper or funeral home website obituary.

I’m not saying it’s not normal to be curious. I’m saying that most empathetic, emotionally intelligent people understand that an obituary is what the family is choosing to share publicly. If you see a family member or friend in person, you may learn more, but that conversation should be led by those closest to the deceased.

I challenge you to write to Ask Carolyn or any other etiquette expert/advice columnist, pose the questions discussed in this thread, and see what they say.[/quote]

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