Obituary Examples and Templates That Sound Like a Person

What an obituary actually needs

Strip away the flourishes and an obituary has six working parts: the announcement of the death, a sketch of the life, the list of family, the service details, any requests (flowers, donations), and a closing line. That's it. Everything else is optional.

The announcement usually carries the full name, age, place of residence, and the date of death. Whether you give the cause is entirely the family's choice; plenty of obituaries simply say 'passed away peacefully' or say nothing at all about how, and nobody reading will think it strange.

The life sketch is where the person shows up. One good specific beats ten generalities: the garden she wouldn't let anyone else weed, the thirty years of Saturday fishing, the terrible puns. If you only have energy for one section, spend it here.

A template you can fill in

[Full name], [age], of [city], died [or: passed away] on [date] at [place: home, hospital name, surrounded by family].

[First name] was born on [date] in [place] to [parents]. [He/She/They] [key life facts: grew up in, studied, worked as, served in, married]. [A sentence or two about character, passions, or a defining habit.]

[First name] is survived by [spouse, children, grandchildren, siblings, listed by name]. [He/She/They] [was/were] preceded in death by [names].

A [service type: funeral service, memorial service, celebration of life] will be held on [date] at [time] at [location]. [In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to (charity).]

Copy that skeleton into a document, fill in what you know, delete what doesn't apply, and you have a publishable obituary. The examples below show how it reads once the blanks become a person.

A short obituary example (around 90 words)

Margaret 'Peg' Doyle, 84, of Millbrook, died peacefully at home on March 3 with her daughters at her side. Born in Scranton in 1941, Peg taught second grade for thirty-one years and considered every one of those children partly hers. She is survived by her daughters Anne and Christine, four grandchildren, and her sister Eileen. Her husband Frank died in 2019. A funeral Mass will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. at St. Brigid's. In lieu of flowers, please read a book to a child.

Short works. Newspapers charge by the line, and a tight obituary with one true detail (that last line) does more than three paragraphs of adjectives.

A full-length example

Walter James Okafor, 71, of Cedar Rapids, died on June 12 after a short illness, holding the hands of the people he loved most.

Walter was born in 1954 in Enugu, Nigeria, the third of six children. He came to Iowa at nineteen with one suitcase and a scholarship to study engineering, and he liked to say the winter of 1974 nearly sent him straight back. It didn't. He stayed forty-eight years, built a career as a civil engineer with the county, and left his initials, quite literally, on half the bridges in the district.

He met Linda at a church potluck in 1980 and told his brother that night he'd met his wife. They were married forty-one years. Together they raised three children who knew, whatever else was uncertain, that their father would be in the front row: at recitals, at swim meets, at a decade of terrible school plays he reviewed each one as 'the best yet.'

Walter is survived by his wife Linda; his children Chidi (Sarah), Amara, and Daniel (Rosa); six grandchildren who called him Papa Wally; and his brothers Emeka and Obi. He was preceded in death by his parents and his sister Ngozi.

A celebration of Walter's life will be held Saturday, June 21, at 2 p.m. at Trinity Lutheran Church, with a reception to follow. The family asks that in place of flowers, you drive carefully over the Third Avenue bridge and think of him.

An example for a mother

Rosa Elena Marquez, 68, our mother, grandmother, and the undisputed head of every table she ever sat at, died on September 2 in Tucson.

Mom was born in Nogales in 1958 and crossed two things her whole life: borders and picket lines, the first as a girl, the second as a hospital cleaner who helped organize her shift and never once missed a day of work. She raised four of us mostly alone, on a cleaner's wage and an iron rule that homework came before everything except dinner, which came before everything, full stop.

Nobody left her house hungry. Nobody left her house without an opinion, either, usually hers.

She is survived by her children Carmen, Luis, Elena, and Marco; nine grandchildren; and her brother Ernesto. Her husband Rafael died in 2011, and we like to think she's already reorganizing his kitchen.

A rosary will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. at San Xavier Chapel, with the funeral Mass Friday at 10 a.m. Wear something bright. She hated black.

An example for a father

Our dad, Thomas 'Tom' Whitaker, 79, of Portland, died on January 18, a Tuesday, which would have annoyed him, because Tuesday was his day at the boatyard.

Tom was born in Astoria in 1946, served two years in the Navy, and spent the next fifty telling everyone the Navy taught him everything except how to stay off boats. He worked as a machinist, fixed anything with a motor for anyone who asked, and measured his life in things that ran again because of him.

He was not a talker. He was a shower-upper: at every game, every breakdown on the side of Highway 30, every 2 a.m. phone call any of us ever made. His love language was a full tank of gas and checking your tire pressure before a long drive.

Tom is survived by his wife of 54 years, Judith; his sons Mark and Steven; his daughter Kate; seven grandchildren; and a 1962 Chris-Craft that is finally, permanently, his problem no longer.

At Tom's request there will be no formal funeral. The family will gather at the boatyard in the spring to put the Chris-Craft in the water. If you knew him, you're invited, and you know to bring your own coffee.

What to leave out

A few omissions are worth making on purpose. Leave out the exact street address of the deceased or the family home; published obituaries are read by burglars who cross-reference service times with empty houses. Leave out the birth date if you can bear to (age is fine); a full name plus an exact birth date is a head start on identity theft, and estates are a known target.

Cause of death is yours to include or not. Families increasingly name overdose or suicide plainly to fight the silence around them, and families equally choose privacy. Both are right.

And leave out anything you'd have to strain to claim. An obituary that says 'he could be difficult, and we loved him' rings truer than one that sands a whole person down to 'beloved by all.'

Where to publish, and what it costs

Newspaper obituaries are paid notices, and the prices surprise people: most metro papers charge by the line or column inch, and a standard-length obituary with a photo commonly runs $200 to $600, with big-city papers going far higher. The short example above would cost a fraction of the long ones. That's a legitimate reason to keep it tight, not a failure of love.

Free alternatives cover most of what an obituary needs to do. The funeral home or cremation provider will usually post the obituary on their website at no charge as part of their service, and that page is what most people find when they search the name. A post on the family's own social media reaches the people the paper never would.

A practical middle path many families take: a short paid notice in the paper with the service details, pointing to the full obituary on the funeral home's site.