Obituaries: America’s Last Cultural Mirror of Legacy
Tuesday, October 7, 2025.
“She never met a stranger.” Four words in a small-town obituary that said more than any résumé. Multiply that by 38 million, and you begin to see how Americans really define a life.
A sweeping linguistic analysis of 38 million American obituaries, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that when pressed to define a life, Americans consistently emphasize tradition and benevolence.
Less power and thrills, more casseroles and caretaking.
In other words: no one cares that you were regional manager of the Northeast office—what they remember is that you loved your grandchildren and showed up to every Sunday service.
What Do 38 Million American Obituaries Teach Us About Legacy?
From a therapeutic perspective, obituaries are grief’s compromise. Families are tasked with answering two impossible questions at once: Who was this person really? And who do we want the world to believe they were?
Therapists call this symbolic immortality (Lifton, 1979)—the idea that part of us continues through children, traditions, or a few paragraphs in the newspaper.
Writing an obituary is not just about reporting death; it’s about stitching continuity into grief. Even in a world of chaos, we get to declare: she loved fishing; he loved pie; they mattered.
And grief is never politics-free. As a therapist, I’ve seen these battles play out in my office long before they hit print. Death doesn’t erase family conflicts—it just changes the stationery.
How Do History and Crisis Shape What We Remember?
David Markowitz, the study’s lead author at Michigan State, explains that every obituary tells two stories: one about the deceased, and one about the society writing it. Which makes obituaries essentially cultural selfies—flattering, a bit blurry, and just self-conscious enough to suggest we were good people.
And, like selfies, the filters shift with history.
After 9/11: mentions of security declined, while tradition and benevolence rose. In a shaken country, we wanted to remember family and faith more than locks and alarms.
After the 2008 crash: achievement plummeted. A corporate title didn’t look so inspiring while neighbors were losing pensions.
After COVID: benevolence collapsed and never returned. Paradoxically, while people were sewing masks, delivering groceries, and isolating for each other’s sake, obituaries stopped highlighting those acts. Trauma compressed language: “She dedicated her life to others” shrank to “She will be missed.”
In therapy, I see this paradox all the time: during crisis, people perform care daily but struggle to name it. Our cultural record of loss reflects that silence.
How Do Gender and Age Shape the Way We’re Remembered?
The gender divide reads like a casting memo from Mad Men:
Men: achievement, power, conformity.
Women: benevolence and pleasure.
Older adults: tradition.
Younger people: self-direction.
If this feels depressingly predictable, you’re right. Death doesn’t liberate us from gender stereotypes; it embalms them.
Consider two public obituaries from the New York Times.
For a banker: “He rose to vice president and oversaw numerous mergers.” For a grandmother: “She crocheted blankets for every new baby in town.” One is remembered for deals, the other for doilies. Guess which one sounds more like a life well-lived?
Global Mourning Rituals: Are Americans Different?
It’s worth noting: this is how Americans write obituaries.
Other cultures tell the story differently. In the U.K., notices lean toward wit and understatement. In Mexico, remembrance lives on Día de los Muertos altars, where food and marigolds say more than any paragraph.
In Japan, ancestor tablets and memorial rituals take precedence over print. Compared to these, the American obituary is hurried but earnest—a compressed biography in casserole form.
Why Are Radical Honest Obituaries Going Viral?
Most obituaries are polite lies of omission.
They sand down the rough edges and present the deceased as kinder, more faithful, and more casserole-bearing than they often were. But every so often, a family decides to break the pact of politeness. Enter the radical honest obituary.
Kathleen Dehmlow (2018): Her Minnesota obituary began predictably before veering into brutal truth: “She abandoned her children… and passed away leaving them behind damaged and bruised. We will face the future without her. We understand that this world is a better place without her.” The internet erupted.
Leslie Ray Charping (2017): His obituary opened with: “Leslie Ray ‘Popeye’ Charping… lived 29 years longer than expected and much longer than he deserved.” It then catalogued his dishonesty and abuse.
These went viral because they broke the cultural treaty: speak well of the dead, or don’t speak at all.
Radical honest obituaries serve as testimony for survivors.
They validate pain, name abuse, and sometimes offer catharsis.
They’re also profoundly American—echoing our confessional memoirs, tell-all reality TV, and courtroom dramas. We don’t just bury our dead; we rate them.
Still, honesty is not neutral. To one sibling it’s courage; to another, cruelty. To the public, it’s still entertainment.
In therapy, I’d call it “continuing the conflict by other means.” Yet there’s an argument that radical honesty is more democratic.
Not everyone deserves a saint’s sendoff. Sometimes, refusing to lie is the legacy. And sometimes, that brutal honesty is the first true gift to survivors. Some family members can only offer the gift of their absence.
Collective Memory in Print and Online
When obituaries make the national page, they transform into cultural therapy.
After 9/11, the Times ran “Portraits of Grief,” humanizing victims with intimate details: one was a salsa dancer, another made jam.
During COVID, the paper filled its front page with 1,000 names, each with one striking fact: “She had a gift for making children feel at ease.” These weren’t résumés. They were fragments of humanity.
In the digital age, platforms like Legacy.com (home to 70% of U.S. death notices) have become a communal ritual space, where condolences scroll like comments and memorials live online indefinitely.
TikTok, improbably, now hosts “obituary trends,” with strangers reading tributes aloud to millions. Our mourning has moved online, but the struggle remains the same: how to condense a life into a paragraph.
What This Really Means for Legacy
So what do 38 million obituaries—and a handful of brutally honest ones—teach us?
That legacy is not just about how you lived, but how others are willing to write about you.
Most families will choose benevolence, tradition, and kindness, even if the reality was messier. A few will choose honesty, and that honesty will sting.
Markowitz calls obituaries “an incredible source of social, psychological, and sociological information.”
In other words, if you want to know what Americans value, don’t look at LinkedIn. Look at what your kids—or whichever sibling can still stand you—say on Legacy.com.
The irony is that it took a massive dataset to confirm what grandmothers already knew: we want to be remembered for loving well. Unless, of course, we didn’t. In which case, brace yourself for the obituary equivalent of a one-star Yelp review.
FAQ (Because Perhaps Someone Will Ask)
Does this mean I should stop trying to succeed?
No. Just don’t expect your job title to outlive you.
What if I want to be remembered for pleasure and thrills?
Maybe you could move to France. Or write your own obituary while you’re still alive.
Is there any hope of breaking stereotypes in death?
Yes. It just requires braver obituary writers. Imagine: “He was selfish and loved martinis.” Now that’s a legacy.
Closing Thought
Obituaries are less about the dead than the living.
They function as acts of cultural therapy, patching grief with short stories that reassure us a life was coherent and meaningful. They remind us that legacy is not what we accumulate but how we are remembered.
Which leaves a question for the living: what would your obituary say if it were written tomorrow?
If you don’t like the answer, change the story now—because you’re still alive, and the obituary is still unwritten. Carp Diem.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Markowitz, D. M., Mazzuchi, T., Syropoulos, S., Law, K. F., & Young, L. (2024). An exploration of basic human values in 38 million obituaries over 30 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(29), e2400925121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400925121
Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60281-6
Lifton, R. J. (1979). The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life. New York: Basic Books.
Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press.
Walter, T. (1999). On Bereavement: The Culture of Grief. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Neimeyer, R. A. (2019). Meaning reconstruction in bereavement: Development of a research program. Death Studies, 43(2), 79–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2018.1480546
Sofka, C. J., Cupit, I. N., & Gilbert, K. R. (2012). Dying, Death, and Grief in an Online Universe. Springer.
Gibbs, M., & Shanks, S. (2022). TikTok and the new rituals of mourning. Social Media + Society, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221111234
New York Times. (2001–2002). Portraits of Grief [Obituary series]. The New York Times.
New York Times. (2020, May 24). U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss. Front page feature.