JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

An unusual occurrence has had me thinking about obituaries recently.

No, I haven’t been diagnosed with a terminal illness and am tying up loose ends. Fortunately, I’m going along pretty well.

What’s been eating at me is that one of my old grade-school friends from Louisville died more than a month ago, and the family has not taken the time to write an obituary and get it published in my hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal.

My friend’s name was Eddie Aubrey. I wasn’t real close with Eddie, but we played on the grade-school basketball team together and ran, basically, with the same group.

Eddie was ahead of most of us physically. His voice deepened and he sprouted hair on his legs and in his armpits in about fifth grade, when the rest of us were hairless — except on the head — and talking in higher voices.

I remember getting on his bad side once — can’t recall what the issue was — and he threatened to throw me down the long, wide front staircase going from the second floor of school, where the gym was, to the school entrance. Nobody messed with Eddie.

I didn’t hang around with Eddie very much, but I remember one time when he and I were at his house, when we were 14 or 15. His parents weren’t home, but a car was in the driveway. Eddie suggested we do a little driveway driving, and, with Eddie at the wheel, we drove up and down the driveway for 15 or 20 minutes. It was a mild thrill, and at least we had the good sense not to go out into the neighborhood.

Although we went attended the same high school, our interactions became quite limited. I don’t know if he went to college. What I do know is that he got a job in Florida and moved down there and spent most of his life there. I believe he and his first wife were divorced and that he remarried. He had children with one or both wives.

Several weeks ago, a mutual friend — a Louisville resident I keep up with regularly — called and told me Eddie had fallen down a flight of stairs and died. It was a shock, and I was looking forward to reading the obituary to find out more about him and his post-grade school life.

But the obit never came. Our mutual friend knows one of Eddie’s sisters, and I asked my friend to try to find out why there had not been an obituary. He got back with me and reported that Eddie’s widow and other survivors were “a mess” and apparently couldn’t face the prospect of writing an obituary.

I guess I’m lucky that I had good enough connections I was able to find out he had died. But imagine all the people whose lives he touched who would appreciate getting word he had died and yet don’t know.

This might seem harsh, but I’ve decided that Eddie’s family’s failure to report his death to the “world at large” is rooted in selfishness. They may be “a mess,” but they have a responsibility to everyone who knew Eddie to establish a public record of his departure. An obituary is not a big deal; somebody in that family surely is able to put a few paragraphs together about Eddie.

The way I see it, there’s really only one valid excuse for not writing an obituary about a loved one: you can’t afford it. Obituary costs in major metropolitan papers, like The Star and The Courier-Journal, are expensive, and some people, I fully understand, cannot afford it.

That certainly isn’t the case with Eddie’s family, though, and from what my friend learned it’s all because they are emotionally distraught.

**

Decades ago, I heard a priest say something in a sermon about death that I have never forgotten. He said, “We are all hurtling toward out ultimate mark on the horizon.”

That is so true. When we die, our children and even our grandchildren are just a few short steps behind us. One’s obituary is a nod to and a formal recognition of that mark on the horizon. If one’s end isn’t noted, the mark is not erased, but it is blurred and amorphized.

I hope Eddie’s surviving relatives come around to that realization soon because they’ve already done him a disservice. His ultimate mark on the horizon deserves to be formally acknowledged.