I recently borrowed my father's copy of Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith by Studs Terkel. One of the last interviews in that book is with a woman who collects some of the "memorabilia" of death, including all sorts of mementos handed out late in the 1800s and early in the 1900s to mourners. In ( Read more... )

Is it morbid to save obituaries from people who mattered to you, even if they passed away long ago? Probably, but here we are. Somewhat surprisingly to me, the obituary for our family friend Barbara Siegel, Mark's wife, was still on the funeral home website from 2004Barbara Siegel, 55, Grand Forks, died at home on Monday, July 12, 2004 of brain ( Read more... )

Today would have been Tulip's 14th birthday. Since I can no longer give her a cheeseburger, I thought I'd pull together links to all the best posts about Tulip that's I've made since her gotcha day back on April 13, 2008. Here they are in chronological order.

1. Gotcha Day! Unfortunately those photos are in my ex's account and I can't get to them ( Read more... )

After I posted Mark's obituary, I realized there might be one or two other obituaries of people I cared about floating around on the internet that I might want to save. That's not morbid, right? Here is the only non-family who has ever referenced me in their obituary, my long-time scout master, Dwight Kalash. I copied it from the funeral homeDwight ( Read more... )

After yesterday's post, I decided I would like a copy of Mark Siegel's obituary in case of future link rot. So here is a copy/paste from the Grand Forks Herald ( Read more... )