Oh, what do you do?

You and I both get it all the time in various forms, "what do you do?" "where do you work? "so what are you doing now?" They all mean the same thing, "tell me what your job is so i can compare mine to yours." Well, whenever i tell people what it is that I do, the reaction probably isn't the same as when you tell people what it is that YOU do. I write obituaries. "oh. that's interesting." Yeah, it's interesting. I'm the person who makes sure that the death notice for you mom or dad or grandpa or grandma or best friend or worst enemy gets in the paper the way you want it to appear. On average, i place between 30 to 40 death notices per day for three different newspapers. I don't usually write them, but i edit, format and okay them to run in the paper. Mostly i correspond with funeral directors who at the end of the day need a drink even more than i do. Death, to me, has become strictly a business transaction. It's my job. If i never leave the paper and continue to do well enough to not get fired, i will always have a job. People will always die.
We're all aware that it's not cheap to die and it's certainly not cheap to place a death notice. In the largest of the three newspapers i write for, it's not unusual to see families paying, on average, $400 for 25 lines of text at 30-35 characters per line. That's not saying a whole lot. It boggles my mind when i complete a $1,500 notice and the family pays like it's change they throw into the basket at a toll booth. Or sometimes a family member will be hesitant about the price, but the same way they're hesitant about buying a hot dog at a baseball game; it's overpriced, but it just comes with the territory and they're going to end up paying for it anyway. I do frequently get customers who bitch and complain so much that i stop listening and check twitter or work on a crossword puzzle until they stop talking. Then i put on my most empathetic voice and politely say, "i understand and i'm very sorry, but these are our standard rates and we only offer discounts to employees or retired employees" because, oh yeah, this is my job and like i said before, it's a business transaction. I understand your favorite aunt may have just died, but i have three more deceased favorite aunts' life stories sitting in my inbox and i have to get them done before deadline so could you please stop your crying, pull yourself together and pay for your aunt's obituary so i can cross her off my list?

It may seem like i'm being insensitive, and maybe i am. It's hard to humanize these humans when all i'm doing is making sure that there are no oxford commas being used or that bile duct cancer isn't unnecessarily capitalized. Joe Smith, 90, of New York isn't a real person to me, i'm sorry. I can't take the time to feel sorry for all 40 people i read about every day. A lot of them are very similar, too. There's a standard format for these notices and if Joan Miller was a two time Nobel Prize winner, that's no more important to me than Bill Davis who was the gyro eating champion of Los Angeles. They're both dead and my job is to make sure that people who read the paper see what Joan and Bill's families want them to see. That's it. Because when they don't get in the paper correctly, i'll hear about it. And rightfully so. These families are paying hundreds of dollars and it's my responsibility to give them what they want.

I can't get involved personally. And when i do, it effects me like it has been for the past couple of weeks. I've been doing this job for just over a year and when i first started i didn't think about the people in the notices being real because i was too concerned about doing them right. As i got more comfortable with the process, i didn't think about the people in the notices being real because i was too concerned about doing them fast. And i do them right and i do them fast. I'm good at my job. But every once in a while, a mom will come along and tell you a story about how her son got ran over by a drunk driver at a party and because it happened on private property, the driver wasn't charged because of a loophole in the law. Or you get a phone call from a 75 year old man who is desperately pouring his heart out to you because his best friend of 60 years just died from cancer and after all the billions of dollars we spend on research, we still couldn't save his friend. Or you talk to the family members of the two teenagers whose bodies were found burning next to a bike trail they often rode. Or you place a joint notice for the 81 year old husband who killed his wife and then himself because her Alzheimer's had gotten unmanageable and he couldn't stand to see her in so much pain, but he certainly couldn't live without her.

It's tough to write about death every day. Even if i'm watching episodes of 30 Rock in between placing notices, it's still something i'm forced to think about every day. My dad died a couple years ago and i wrote his obituary. I took it seriously and now i see dozens of obituaries every day that are just like his. They're well-written and a little more personalized than they need to be, but the family feels it's a nice tribute to their loved one to leave a legacy in the newspaper. That's most definitely how my family felt when my dad died. We kind of wanted to brag about him. Hey, he was a good guy and everybody liked him and we want you to remember that! Now, looking back on my dad's obituary, i think about me placing the notice for him as if i had no relation to him. As if his was just another notice i got after i came back from my lunch break or something. I wouldn't have even batted an eye at his obituary, but to me at that moment, i was very proud of him and myself and my family. Sometimes i think about the difference in the process of the family writing the obituary compared to me placing it in the paper; it's a world apart.

But when you're already depressed and you write about a depressing subject for 40 hours a week, life becomes just a little bit harder. I don't take the time to stop and smell the roses and i don't live every day to it's fullest. You would think with a job that reminds me that i could die at any time, i'd appreciate the little things a little more. I don't. I agonize over the fact that i don't because i DO get reminded every day that i could die at anytime. I want so badly to ironically live my life whilst writing about people's lives that have just ended. It's tough. Life is so mentally tough and my job is so mentally tough and i am not mentally tough. When i tell people what i do, they're so impressed, they say it's the coolest thing they've ever heard. To me, it's not that impressive. It's a job like anyone elses and i get paid to do it like anyone else. I'm more concerned about turning my life around so i don't become a story that effects the person placing my obituary like the stories that effect me. I don't want to be written about just yet and this is my journey to make sure that doesn't happen.