You can give the cause of death briefly, either in general terms (for example, “ died by suicide” or “was the victim of a violent crime”) or with specificity (“was shot during a drug-related dispute“), and then quickly move on. If that’s important to you, or you know that’s what the obituee would have wanted, you’re within your rights to sidestep the cause of the person’s tragic death. But staying mum also preserves your own privacy and that of the family and the obituee. Doing so ignores the elephant in the room, leaving curious readers to fill in the blanks with gossip and conjecture.
If you’re faced with the unwelcome task of memorializing someone who has died a tragic death, you have a choice to make: When the next person dies of an opioid overdose-one of 70,000 such deaths per year in the United States-who takes the blame? The addicted person? The doctor who wrote the prescription? The pharma company that manufactures the drug? Makers of public policy who refuse to legalize access to naloxone (Narcan), an overdose antidote? Law enforcement hardliners who refuse to carry naloxone? It’s complicated.When a person who lacks basic necessities dies by suicide in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, does it count as a suicide death, a natural disaster, or a failure of government?.Were the 59 Las Vegas shooting deaths (October 2017) the shooter’s fault-period? Or did he have access to weapons and gun modifications that should be legally available only to those in uniform? Or perhaps the mental health system failed him?.When people die violently or just suddenly and tragically-as with the heartbreaking deaths of two children hit by a car in Brooklyn on March 5-the finger of blame often points in several directions:
How do you write an obituary for someone who dies a tragic death? The more parties are at fault, the more complicated grief can be, since families don’t know where to channel their anger. Also making headlines was a series of package bombings in Austin that killed two people before the alleged bomber took his own life. Flying under the radar were two murder/suicides characterized as acts of domestic violence: men in Kentucky (February 10) and Detroit (February 26) each killed 5 people, including themselves. The nation was horrified but not surprised by the Parkland school shooting on Valentine’s Day, which left 17 people dead. The year 2018 has given us senseless deaths in abundance. Since then, “Tragic Death and Obituary Writing” has become one of the most popular posts on this site. This post first appeared on December 29, 2017, just after the Bronx apartment fire that killed 12 people.
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