Paid obituaries, or death notices, are certainly nothing new. Members of the family and or friends notify others, and the public at large, of someone's passing. Funeral arrangements and particulars are detailed. There is a certain solid format one can expect.
What has been happening in the last few years is the paid death notice that is epic in length. It is taken out by the same relatives or friends, but acts more like a biographical infomercial than just a notice. Pictures usually accompany these. Newspapers charge a lot for any kind of advertising, and these are no exception. A long notice for a long life doesn't necessarily mean a discount. They become a revenue center for the paper.
We get someone's cradle to grave achievements. Their scholastic, military, athletic, professional, philanthropic career highlights. Their marriages, children, grandchildren, and where they all live. We get Business Week like details about how the company they started out with became another company through mergers and acquisitions. We get hobbies, and even in one case what their last meal was seasoned with. (Cinnamon, not arsenic.)
The longer the notice the near guarantee it will become embarrassing in detail. No one makes you read these, but if you do, you start to feel like you've intruded into someone's family. You're caught in an elevator and someone's spilling their guts out. They didn't just press a floor's button, they pressed memory dump.
But without judging their motives, or making fun of the details imparted, a haiku, or a tome, a notice does tell us one thing: someone is missed, who can only come back through a memory.
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