[chrisinhouston]

I've been reading lots of obituaries this past week and I am so tired of the typical story line and format, the smiling pictures and that they went to church and enjoyed gardening, puzzles and scrap booking.

About once a year I get back into my family genealogy project which includes finding out which of my distant cousins has checked out permanently. These are mostly relatives on my mother's side, she was part of group of Minnesota farm families who were almost always Catholic and when you put those 2 demographics together (farmers and Catholics) you end up with families with 8-12 children on average, sometimes more.

This week I was extremely successful and discovered at least 9 cousins born in the 1920's died. I enter the date and place of death into my genealogy program which has over 7000 names in it going back a few hundred years. Then I copy and paste the obituary into the file for that person. Sometimes there is a picture and I save that, too.

Mostly I see pictures of smiling old people, sometime an old picture of them as a younger self is published. They are always smiling.... and the obituary almost always says something about where and when they were born and to whom, family who has already died and those who are still living. And they almost always say that the person liked gardening, volunteering at church, woodworking and doing crossword puzzles.

I told my wife if I go first to just keep it short, something like "Chris Summers died." Obituaries aren't cheap, after all. Don't say I liked crafts or gardening or any of that and be sure and say I gave up being a Catholic when I was a teenager and never attended church after that. And publish a picture of me that isn't some typical smiley photo. I like these ones the most, feel free to tell me which one you think would be best.