Obituaries... reasons to read them! Obituaries... why read them? Obits are a notice of a death... typically including a brief biography of the deceased person. So you might read them because: You look for friends’ names. You look for your name! (Just kidding!) Or when the folks in the obits are younger than you, you wonder why you are still alive. Then one woman explained to me that when her unmarried girlfriend got to be 55 years old, she started reading the obits to see who was eligible for dating again! But a comforting reason came to me one day. The obituary page is the one place in the newspaper that you are sure to see stories about people who were loved. I’ve never seen an obit saying the guy was a bum or liar. The listings mention how much the deceased will be missed by children and grandchlldren and cousins and good friends, etc. It might mention what their jobs had been or what they had been interested in. A surprise ending to the obit! There was even one death notice that had a surprise ending! Read on. Usually the remembrances are written by the person or family putting it in the paper. But one was apparently written by the person who had died! A recent St. Paul Pioneer Press obituary section had this one: “Mayer, Beth born October 18, 1919 in Wildrose, North Dakota. “To Charles Teske, watchmaker & inventor, & his wife, Martha Alice Piersen Teske, the youngest of six children. Charles missed a patent on the unbreakable mainspring by just a few months.” The obituary continues In “first person” vernacular and was printed with no corrections as follows: “He died when I was yet young. After that Mom moved us around alot to find work. “I especially remember our times at Johnson's Certified Dairy Farm in Robbinsdale, MN, where Mom cooked for the hired hands. She had every other Saturday off & we would go by streetcar into Mpls. to shop. We always ate lunch at Dayton's & I would always order blueberry pie or chocolate cake & icecream. “I remember vividly the day Charles Linberg's son was kidnapped and murdered. I was 13. I bought my first driver's license at a filling station in Excelsior for 10 cents. I went to the Jr. Prom with Harold and the Sr. Prom with Albert. “I was crowned queen of the Winter Carnival & my picture was in the Brown Section of the Mpls. Paper, which later became the Parade Section. Then she tells about graduating from college, meeting her husband there, her family, her work, her interests and trips. Now read the ending! If you read this obituary to the end, you will find the surprise. The 90 year old lady writes: “What more was there left to do? I died at 10:10 AM, Sept. 10, 2010 with few regrets. I only wish I had learned to play the piano. My memorial service will be...” Besides musing about her writing her own time of death, I thought how wonderful if we only regretted not learning to play the piano!