Three complete obituaries, each for a different place of publication. The names are fictional, the form is real. After each text, you will see why it works, so you can transfer the pattern to your own obituary. The structure is explained on the obituary page.
Example 1: The company obituary
Situation: Staff circular and notice in the local paper. A toolmaker, 34 years with the company, text agreed with the family.
We mourn the loss of our colleague
William Collins
who died on 12 June at the age of 61.
William joined us in 1992 as a toolmaker and shaped our production team for 34 years. He helped build the training workshop in which 87 young people have since completed their apprenticeships. Many of them work here today, and almost all name William as the person who taught them patience.
If you were looking for him, you found him at the milling machine or by the coffee machine on the ground floor, where he asked every apprentice the same first question: “What did you learn today?” His advice was brief, his standards high, his door open.
We lose in him a colleague to whom this company owes more than any notice can say. Our sympathy is with his wife Susan and his two sons.
We will honour his memory.
Management and staff of North Precision Ltd
Why this obituary works: The contribution can be named: the training workshop, 87 apprentices. Those numbers could appear in no other obituary, which is what separates tribute from formula. The scene by the coffee machine gives the text a face everyone in the company recognises. The farewell names the close relatives; that assumes the family has seen the text in advance, as this obituary has.
Example 2: The club obituary in the newsletter
Situation: Half-page notice with photo in a sports club newsletter. Honorary member and founder of the girls’ handball section.
Greenfield Sports Club mourns its honorary member
Helen Roberts
who died on 3 May at the age of 84.
Helen had belonged to our club since 1961. In 1974 she founded the girls’ handball section, despite serious doubts in that committee meeting, and coached it for 22 years. Three of her players went on to play at regional level. Something else mattered more to her: no girl should ever have to stop because of the fees. Where money was short, Helen quietly made sure it was there. How often, she never said.
Until last autumn, she sat at every home game high on the left of the stand, with a flask and a notebook in which she collected the mistakes in our defence. The committee received the list on Mondays. She was usually right.
Greenfield Sports Club loses a woman who helped build this club for more than six decades. Our sympathy is with her children and grandchildren.
The committee of Greenfield Sports Club
Why this obituary works: The voluntary work is told concretely: founding year, 22 years of coaching, quiet help with fees. The notebook anecdote lets readers smile without weakening the dignity of the text; in a club newsletter there is room for that because many readers knew Helen personally. The resistance in 1974 is also allowed to appear. It makes her achievement larger while keeping the tone reconciled.
Example 3: The personal family obituary in the newspaper
Situation: Notice from the children in the daily paper, around two weeks after the funeral. Few lines, each one paid for.
Our father, Charles Bennett
died on 21 June at the age of 79.
He was a postman in Ashford for 41 years and knew every front door on his route. If someone was ill, he carried the post up to the flat door, long after that had stopped being part of the job.
After retirement, his mornings belonged to the garden and the neighbours. For three winters he cleared the path for Mrs Harris across the road and put the newspaper by her door. He never told us. We learned it from her only after the funeral.
He did not use many words. His garden is in full bloom. We will keep watering it.
With love and gratitude,
Marian and Andrew with their families
Why this obituary works: No life story, no inflated praise. Two observations show the person: the post brought to the flat door, the cleared path. The fact that the children learned one of them from a neighbour says more about this father than any adjective could. The final sentence with the garden replaces the usual farewell formula with a promise, and those are the sentences readers remember.
The pattern behind all three obituaries
All three follow the same outline: name and relationship first, then one concrete contribution, one personal memory, and a farewell line. Length and closeness change. The company stays factual and warm, the club can allow a smile, and the family can become very quiet. When you write your own obituary, first collect the one memory that belongs only to this person. The rest will arrange itself around that. The detailed structure is explained on the obituary page.