This past week I wrote an obituary. I have written many
different types of pieces in my life as a writer but this was the first
obituary I ever wrote. You see this past week my mother in law passed away at
the age of 82. Her name was Margaret Conant Michael and my husband, John was
the second of her four children. As I wrote the information down about her
life, it occurred to me that the facts don’t really tell the whole story of a
person. How do you convey a life in a few short words that run in the obituary
column of a newspaper?
Sure, I mentioned her honors; she
was a Trustee Emerita of Brown University and a recipient of the prestigious
Brown Bear Award. She served on the President’s Advisory Board of World Vision,
and was a member of the international women’s business organization known as
the Committee of 200. And I told that after her husband’s tragic death in a
plane crash in 1972, she became the sole owner and president of Michael-Walters
Industries, Inc., a successful small business providing lubricants to the coal
industry which she and her husband David started in 1964. And I told that she
was active in her church teaching Sunday School and getting enthusiastically
involved in the youth ministry when her children were teens.
But that just doesn’t really tell
her story. It doesn’t show the love she had for her late husband whom she met
during Freshman week at Brown
University
It doesn’t tell how she kept the
family together and bravely ran her husband’s business in his absence, keeping
her head high and her spirits up. It doesn’t tell her faith which was a rock to
her in difficult times. It doesn’t tell how every year she used to sprinkle
candy and nuts in a line from the Christmas stockings to the front door and
just outside and would then tell her children that she walked in on Santa
startling him so he ran out the door as fast as he could dropping the goodies
behind in his hurry. Or how she led the family in a small parade beating pots
and pans around her house at the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve every
year, or how her eyes twinkled when she sang silly songs which she loved to
sing even in her old age in the nursing home.
No, a short obituary just doesn’t
get the story of a life told really. So those of us who remember keep her story
alive in our hearts.
“Precious in the sight
of the Lord is the death of His saints.” Psalms 116:5
