Editor Shrinks From This Task

I dislike writing the obituary of an old lady. It seems too futile trying to set down in writing the things she did. She was born, grew up, joined the church, was married, became a mother and passed to her reward. The dates of her birth, marriage and death are mentioned for they are high points of her existence. The story of her life is pitifully short.

The life story of her husband would record the facts of his existence and also of his business life. Perhaps, too, it would tell of political triumphs and of what he had done for the town. The stranger who might read it would understand that the town had lost a valuable citizen. We cannot tell, in writing, the obituary of a woman of all the triumphs and disasters of her life. They would sound too petty. When as a bride she and her husband set up a home she assumed responsibilities that she had never known before. She learned to spend hours doing toilsome work that was never finished. Day after day the same thing had to be done and she became an expert at doing them. But those things did not deserve mention in the final story of her life. They were not outstanding.

She risked her life each time a child was born. There was a family for her to care for. But we can't give credit for that. Mothers have been doing that since the dawn of time.

She brought her children into the world and she washed them and dressed them and loved them and kissed away their tears. She bandaged their injured fingers and toes. She nursed them through sickness and she smoothed their paths through life and all the while she was encouraging her husband and helping him to become successful.

She made his home cheerful and restful. She listened to the stories of his troubles and encouraged him to try again when disaster overtook him, and when success would come and his head began to rise among the clouds she would gently pull him back to earth and continue the process of making a man of him.

But she gets no credit for any of these things. It is what she was put on earth to do.

At last she comes to the end of the toilsome journey and she is laid to rest. Her funeral is attended by many who did not know her but who came out of respect to her husband or her children, who are their friends. The minister reads from a slip of paper the uninteresting facts of her birth, marriage and death, and names the members of her family who survive her, but he does not tell all the things she did partly because they are taken for granted.

You can't put all that into an obituary. People might laugh at you for writing it.

--Verlin S. Sweely, Editor, Lenox (Iowa), Times-Table

Reprinted in The Matagorda County Tribune, Thursday, February 8, 1934