How to Write Your Mother's Obituary

Carrying the weight of losing your mother, dealing with the organization of a proper home going ceremony, PLUS designing a funeral program, writing a eulogy or obituary cannot be simplified in any possible way. Whether you had the best of times or rode rocky waves with your mother, you can recall her life journey just as she would. Here are a few ways that will help you express the best aspects of your mother without fueling your grief.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Personal Records
• Memorabilia
• Close friends, relatives, co-workers, etc.
• Pencil
• Paper
• Recorder
• Computer
• Lots of tissue

1. Escape The Present First, all alone, sit and visualize your mother as if you where a young child again. What did you love most about her? What was something that she did during this time that you will never forget? Was she your hero? Was she very hard on you? Where these tough times? Now that you have centered in on this time open your eyes and write down all the descriptive words that come to mind. Was she beautiful, smart, determined, hard-working, loving, and/or friendly? Or was she stern, mean, strict, sad, tired, sick and/or angry? (For writer's block issues you may use the following process for usage ideas, etc. if your positive words are majority) If your negative words outweigh the positive, looking back at it all today, why this was the case? Maybe there were circumstances that influenced these things? Next, try to think of another word using the overall intention behind her actions (whether it was accomplished or not). So instead of talking about how strict your mother was, for example, say she was "characterized by her standards of excellence in all areas of life." Finally, if this does not work, go to Dictionary.com and type in your original word. Search the lists of adjectives and verbs for softer or more delicate substitutes that represent her true intentions. Pull additional words from this list to define, and repeat the process (f necessary) until at least 3-4 positive sentences, words or thoughts can be written down.
2. Cleansing Reach out to any of her close immediate family members. This may include a spouse or significant other, siblings, children and many more. Conduct mini interviews over the phone or in person, or even as a group. Your approach is up to you, just personalize it with specific questions. Ask one person "what did she represent in your life?" and another, "what is a funny story that only the two of you would know?" Whatever the questions may be just make sure you don't ask everyone the same thing. This will give you more of a variety of special moments, comments and great memories for the next generation. One suggestion, if your family is up to it, would be to record comments and remarks. Maybe you can send an audio or video recorder with a blank tape from house to house and let family members record reflections in the privacy of their own home.
3. Contact co-workers, close friends, etc. Ask them what type of person they knew your mother to be? Maybe she made a difference in their life or simply smiled every time she saw them and said hello. You never know what impact she may have had on the world around her. Get a feel for the Mom you maybe didn't even know.
4. Gather your Mother's favorite items, or at least think about them. What color are they? What was her favorite scent or flower? What was her favorite outfit? How about a favorite song? Dissect the lyrics to see just why it was her fav. There are many things that could represent something very great about your Mom within her own personal items. Look at old pictures to get a feel for her presence all over again.
5. Lastly, you can begin to write the obituary, which in itself is not hard. Just using information such as city/state born in, birthdate,education,work history, volunteer work, military ranking, spouse/significant other, list of immediate family and other close survivors. I feel that the hardest part is preparing it for someone so near and dear. Visit the Ehow Culture & Society editor's "How to write an obituary". Using this in combination with my suggestions above will help you fully prepare a personalized obituary and funeral program. Please go to Funeralprinter.com and click on funeral programs for service outlines, poems and other resources that may make planning everything less overwhelming. Take this opportunity to honor your Mother to the best of your ability, you cannot do it over.

Tips & Warnings

• Personalize as much as possible. My suggestions are just to get you thinking in such a time as this
• As you finalize things and make decisions, do so as She would have wanted them to be done
• Ask friends or family to help edit, spell check and proofread any of your work before printing
• The above is just my advice, it is not a widely proven method and is suggested to try. This may or may not work for you and your family.
• I have very thankfully not lost my Mother, but have applied the above when I recently lost my young uncle, Byron Davis. RIP