How we honor the dead in words

What’s the difference between an obituary and a tribute, or an elegy and a eulogy? There are a number of written forms that have been used traditionally for honoring those who have died. Here is a explanation of the most common.

Traditional obituaries

I think of a traditional obituary as using the conventions that we have historically seen in a newspaper obituary, which over the years evolved to have a certain formula:

• Essentially, a newspaper obituary is a news story about the death of a person in the community. It begins with a lead paragraph that includes the person’s name, a few words about what they were most know for, and the date, place, and cause of death.
• That is usually followed by a chronology of the person’s life, including things like career acheivements, marriages, hobbies, places lived, and other milestone events. This section can also include some words about the individual’s personality, their legacy, the ways they influenced, helped or affected other people — in short, what sort of mark they left on the world.
• Finally, a traditional obituary usually concludes with a list of survivors, and perhaps details about a funeral or memorial service, if they are to be public.

Typically, when I work with clients, I interview them for stories and anecdotes to distill into the format of an obituary.

Traditional obituaries have their place, and in many cases they work well as a remembrance. But they are not for eveyone. It’s important to remember that traditional obits evolved within the context of print newspapers. If you choose not to publish an obituary in a newspaper, you may have a lot more freedom to construct your tribute in other ways.

Tributes and nontraditional obituaries

What we might call a “tribute,” on the other hand, is a broader category of honoring a person with words or images. Yes, there can be a fine line between an obituary and a tribute, but a tribute might be a prose poem, or a long memory, or a very personal story told from the perspective of a survivor. It could even be something like a photo essay. These less-traditional formats can be more personal than traditional obituaries, and sometimes more moving in their own way.

Think of something like a slideshow with music that might be played at a memorial service, for instance. This can certainly be a worthy tribute to a person’s life, and say as much about them as a traditional obit. It’s really up to you to decide on the best way to tell your loved one’s story. That’s why we have designed Elegy to be more flexible than just an online obituary service.

Eulogies

A eulogy is a speech typically delivered at a funeral or a memorial service. This is a way of honoring a dead loved one with essential stories that are typically told by a relative or close friend of the deceased. Eulogies can be longer than typical obituaries, and eulogies don’t necessarily have a standard structure like you find in an obituary. Also, eulogies are often more personal than what we’d share in a newspaper obituary. But of course, there’s some crossover, between the two.

Elegies

An elegy is a specific literary form. It is technically a funeral poem or song, a lament for a person who has died (as well as the name we chose for this platform). Many well-known elegies are about famous people, but that is not always true.

Like any good literary work, an elegy can be at once both deeply personal and also somehow universal, that is, relatable to anyone, even if they never knew the person being written about.

Some famous elegies from literature include John Milton’s poem “Lycidas,” which he wrote for a friend who drowned in a shipwreck; Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” written about his dying father; and “O Captain, My Captain,” Walt Whitman’s lament on the death of Abraham Lincoln.

You can also find elegies in popular music, songs such as Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,” written about the actress Marilyn Monroe, or Jackson Browne’s “For a Dancer.”

Epitaphs

An epitaph is a short phrase or quotation that sums up an essential quality or idea at the core of a person’s life. “Epitaph” shares the same root as the word epitomize. In other words, it is a few words that “epitomize” someone’s life.

Traditionally, an epitaph is often engraved on the person’s gravestone or tombstone. But it doesn’t have to be. Here on Elegy it serves as a sort of headline, leading into a person’s story.

A few famous examples of epitaphs:

• The gravestone of Mel Blanc, the man who voiced Bugs Bunny and many other Loony Toon character, features the show’s tagline: “That’s all, folks”
• Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. tombstone includes a line from one of his famous speeches: “Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty I’m Free at last”
• Singer Frank Sinatra’s gravestone includes the title of one of his iconic recordings: “The best is yet to come”
• Some people request their epitaph before they die. The mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen, the first person to calculate the value of pi to 35 decimal places, asked for that number itself to be the epitaph inscribed on his gravestone: “3.14159265358979323846264338327950288”

Jamie Passaro is a writer of obituaries and other personal stories. She is the owner of the obituary writing service Dear Person, and is co-founder of Elegy.