Obits in My Email

I have an electronic and a "hard copy" subscription to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which, as you may know, no longer publishes an edition for home delivery every day. Four days a week (I think). The others days? Go to a newsstand--or read it online (I do the latter).

I have a long history with the Plain Dealer. When we moved to Hiram, Ohio, in August 1956 (I was 11), we subscribed to it (and, oh, was it weighty then--in lbs., not necessarily content). In 1982 I began writing regular op-ed pieces for them (about one/month as part of their Board of Contributors).

And in November 2000, I published my first book review in the PD, a gig I would continue (and love) until 2015 when the paper, downsizing, no longer published many reviews by local freelancers and took most of their copy from what we used to call the "wire services."

Anyway, one of the online features I now receive from the PD is a daily list of ... obituaries. Sometimes I look; usually, I don't. (Link to today's.)

Here's why I don't:

• I don't like to see stories about people dying too young.
• I don't like to see stories about people who have suffered for a long time.
• I don't like to see stories about people killed in accidents--or overdoses--or whatever.
• I don't like to see stories about the deaths of people I knew.
• I don't like to see stories about death. 

Other than that, I'm cool with the daily obits that arrive in my inbox about 9 each morning.

Yes, yes, death is a part of life and all that ... but ... it's not the part we like to cherish, is it? No, for most of us, it's the part we dread and fear and think--for a long, long time--will not really apply to us, you know? Death is for ... other people.

But then one day, of course, the air grows cold, even in the hottest summer day; there's a deeply unpleasant odor; there's some thing in black with a scythe standing on the front porch; there's some writer from the Plain Dealer typing away to supply copy for the email that will arrive in ... someone else's inbox.