At this workshop, you learn to write your own obituary
On a Monday evening in September, seven people gather at the Rhizome, a house that has been converted into a community arts space in the District of Columbia. They range in age from late 20s to early 70s, and come from an array of professions. They’re all here for an unusual writing exercise: one where people — typically of the healthy, nondying variety — hammer out the text for their own obituaries.
The group’s facilitator is Sarah Farr, 43, a trained death doula. In the spring of 2017, she formed Death Positive DC and began hosting regular events: “death cafes,” where people sit around and chat about death, often over cake; and obituary writing workshops like this one. (Death cafes are free or donation based; obituary writing workshops cost $10.)
Farr opens the workshop by tracing the history of obituaries in American journalism and outlining their shifting cultural significance through major events such as the AIDS crisis and 9/11. She brings up the role that race and gender have played in the obituary sections of newspapers. She also encourages the group to think about how the advent of social media and memorial websites have changed the way deaths are reported. She shares examples of funny, viral obituaries and dives into the ethics of adult children publishing unflattering obituaries of their parents.
Then, educated about obituaries and ready to craft their own, the participants are set loose. They wander to different corners of the house or outside to the porch, and they begin to write.
Obituary writing workshops are part of an expanding suite of activities that fall under the umbrella of the “death positive movement.” Based on the belief that cultural avoidance of discussing death is harmful, the movement encourages people to speak more openly about dying. It had been rumbling for several