MONTREAL – I WRITE OBITUARIES

This job was really hard to do at first. Listening to people break down over the phone is dreadful. I got used to it pretty quickly: the trick is to ignore these things called “emotions” and “human decency”.

My shifts vary. Sometimes I won’t do anything all day because no one has died, but other times I’m so busy I won’t be able to take lunch. Much like any other newsroom, I have deadlines to follow. We’re usually only two people working so we don’t have time to get into sympathetic conversations with clients: we have to interrupt them and be like, “um, OK, that’ll be $860”. Obituaries are expensive. And I shouldn’t admit this, but we make commission off them. That’s probably what turned my co-workers and I into greedy, cold-hearted monsters. On quiet nights we actually wish people would die. Not young people or anything, just old ones. Like war vets.

Sometimes people call in and write obituaries for themselves. These people are still alive and that makes it awkward. When it finally hits them that they’re foreshadowing their own death, they start crying a lot and complaining about whatever disease they have. I think they just want someone to talk to. That person can’t be me, though, and so I must find a way to hang up immediately. Other times, old people call in to check if their friends have died. That makes sense. Going to funerals is like clubbing for old people.

Weird deaths (murders, freak accidents, etc) are the most interesting notices, but you have to pay special attention to them. You have to be very careful with the wording. For some reason, you can’t say stuff like, “jumped onto metro tracks” or “was beheaded”. Unlike a regular newspaper article might, an obituary can’t sensationalize someone’s passing.

Another thing to watch out for is typos. I work with ancient computer software. It looks like MS DOS. It’s a black screen with green lettering. You move around with the tab key. Clearly, this piece of shit doesn’t have spell-check. No matter how many times we proofread notices, mistakes sometimes slide by. Remember that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode; ‚Äòdevoted sister, beloved cunt’? That could totally happen. If a grieving family notices a typo in the obit they placed, all hell will break lose. You can offer to run it again for free, but they won’t be happy until they insult and/or threaten you. Once, a funeral home had me call a family and apologize to them for forgetting to put a fucking French accent on someone’s name. Come on! Little did they know that while they were taking all their gut-wrenching misery and anger out on me, I was playing Tetris (which I’m really good at, by the way).

MELC