Death has always fascinated me.
Not in the self-harm, can’t-wait-to-get-there sort of way.
But the stories we tell when someone dies.
I love obituaries. Both the short ones that the funeral homes send to the newspaper to print and the long ones that we write when someone of some importance — good or bad — dies.
I keep my online subscription to the New York Times if for no other reason than to read the obituaries. The Times knows how to write an obit. I think everyone who has never read Hunter S. Thompson’s obituary of Richard Nixon for the Rolling Stone is missing one of the greatest pieces of writing anyone has ever attempted.
I love the “in memoriam” segments on award shows like the Oscars, the Emmys and the Grammys.
As a kid, even, I looked forward to the first Sunday of the new year because the old Courier Journal Magazine would recount the major deaths from the previous year.
All the important deaths — from around the city, from around the country and around the world — right there in one list.