Death Follows Me

Death follows me, not in superstition and not in spectacle. It follows me because I walk toward it.

I am a feature obituary writer. My work places me in the presence of endings. I sit with families in living rooms and at kitchen tables. I listen as they describe laughter, discipline, sacrifice, habits, contradictions, and devotion. I gather what remains in memory and shape it into narrative. When I am finished, a life that has stopped moving regains dimension in print.

The documentary Obit introduced many people to the quiet subculture of obituary journalism — reporters who research, structure, and document lives with discipline and historical responsibility. I recognize that tradition. Obituary writing is not casual tribute. It is reported narrative. It is craft. It is accountability to the record.



There is a difference between a funeral home notice and a feature obituary. A funeral notice announces a death and provides service details. A family-written obituary offers tribute from those who loved the person most. A reported feature obituary does something different. It places an individual within context. It documents a life for readers beyond the family. It preserves complexity. It resists reduction to dates and affiliations.

I do not leave this work unchanged.

Each time I complete an article, I have spent hours reconstructing a human being through the eyes of those who loved them. I write about their first jobs, their marriages, their failures, their quiet generosities. I write about what they built and what they endured. And then I type the final date. That act carries weight. It is the moment where story meets finality.

After finishing an article, I would call my parents. I did not think of it as ritual at the time. I only knew that after spending the day with someone else’s ending, I needed to hear the voices of the two people who gave me mine. It steadied me.

My mother has since passed.

I have written many feature obituaries. I cannot write the first word of hers. I do not want to put the end date on her. I am not ready to seal her life into a column. That is not avoidance of craft. It is the weight of being a son.

Grief does not resolve itself through movement. A different skyline does not quiet absence. Geography does not outrun loss. Stability is internal. Whether I write at a newsroom desk or at a table in my own home, the responsibility remains the same.

Death follows me because I have chosen to work where life meets its end. I approach it with discipline, restraint, and care. I do my best to honor the dead by restoring dimension to their lives in language. This work is not spectacle. It is stewardship.

If you entrust me with the story of someone you love, I will handle it with respect.

Selected Feature Obituaries

San Antonio Express-News | MySA

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