How to Write Your Own Obituary: A Calm, Practical Guide (With a Template)

October 3, 2026 · 8 min read

Most obituaries are written in a hurry, by someone who is grieving, against a newspaper or funeral-home deadline, from memory. That is why so many of them read the same way: a list of dates, a list of relatives, a sentence about hobbies, "in lieu of flowers". Writing your own obituary now, while you can take your time, is not morbid. It is one of the kindest administrative gifts you can leave, and it is the one document where you get to decide how the story is told.

This guide walks through what an obituary is actually for, what to include, what to leave out, a template you can fill in over a quiet afternoon, and the step most people forget: making sure the people who will need it can find it.

Why write it yourself

Three reasons come up again and again from people who have done it. First, accuracy: your family may not know the name of the village your grandmother came from, the year you changed careers, or that the "best friend" was actually your cousin. Second, relief for them: on the worst week of their lives, one fewer blank page. Third, voice: an obituary written by you can sound like you, wry or plain or warm, instead of a form filled in by a stranger.

There is also a quieter benefit. Sitting down to summarise your own life tends to surface what you have not yet said to people. Many who write an obituary end up writing a legacy letter straight afterwards, because the obituary is for everyone and the letter is for someone.

What an obituary is (and is not)

An obituary is a public notice of a death that also tells a short version of a life and gives practical details about the funeral or memorial. It is typically 200 to 600 words. It is not a eulogy (spoken, personal, longer), not a legal document, and not your will. Keep those jobs separate: your will and your digital accounts need their own paperwork, and an obituary that tries to settle scores or distribute belongings becomes a problem rather than a comfort.

Newspapers usually charge by the line or by the word, so a draft that runs long is fine for the funeral home website or an online memorial and can be trimmed for print. Write the full version first; cutting is easier than inventing.

What to include

• The announcement. Full name (including a maiden name or nickname people actually used), age, city, and the date of death. Leave the date and cause blank or bracketed; whoever publishes it will fill them in.
• The life, briefly. Where you were born and raised, the people and places that shaped you, education, work, and the one or two things you were genuinely known for. Not every job, not every address.
• The people. Who survives you and who went before you. Decide now how you want blended families, estranged relatives and chosen family described; this is where most families argue, and your own wording settles it.
• What mattered. A sentence or two of character: the garden, the terrible puns, the Sunday phone calls, the volunteer shift you never missed. This is what people will remember reading.
• Practical details. A placeholder for service details, and your wishes about flowers, donations or a charity, if you have them.
• A closing line. Optional. Some people like a quote, a line from a hymn or song title, or a plain thank-you to carers. Keep it to one line.

What to leave out

• Your exact home address and date of birth. Obituaries are routinely scraped for identity fraud. City and age are enough.
• Grievances. An obituary is read at a funeral and kept in a drawer for decades. It is not the place to be right about someone.
• Details that will date badly. Job titles, employers and phone numbers change. Write about what you did, not where you were doing it on the day you wrote the draft.
• Medical history. "After a long illness" or nothing at all is the convention. The people who need the details already have them.

Choose a tone before you write a word

The quickest way to get unstuck is to decide what the obituary should sound like. Three patterns cover most people:

1. Plain and warm. Third person, chronological, no jokes. "Maria was born in Porto in 1954 and moved to Manchester at nineteen, where she spent forty years teaching maths and refusing to retire." This is the safest choice and the easiest for family to edit.
2. First person. "I was born in Cork, I never learned to swim, and I married the first person who laughed at my cooking." Rare, memorable, and very much you. It works best for short obituaries and can feel jarring if the family has to add service details in third person at the end, so write that part yourself.
3. Wry. Self-deprecating obituaries get shared widely, but read yours aloud to someone who loves you. What is funny on a Tuesday afternoon can land strangely at a graveside. One good line beats five.

A template you can fill in

Copy this into a document and replace the brackets. Everything in brackets is a placeholder; everything else is a suggestion you can keep or delete.

1. [Full name], [age], of [city], died [on date] [surrounded by family / at home / peacefully].
2. [First name] was born in [place] on [year or date] to [parents]. [One sentence about childhood or where you grew up.]
3. [One or two sentences on education, work or the calling that defined you, written as what you did rather than a job title.]
4. [Two or three sentences about character: what you loved, what people came to you for, a habit everyone will recognise.]
5. [First name] is survived by [partner], [children and their partners], [grandchildren], [siblings], and [chosen family or close friends by name if you wish]. [He/She/They] was preceded in death by [names].
6. A [service / celebration of life / private burial] will be held [details to follow]. [In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to [charity].]
7. [Optional closing line.]

Write it in one sitting, badly. Then leave it for a week and read it aloud. Most of the editing is removing adjectives and adding one specific detail per paragraph: not "she loved cooking" but "she made the same lemon cake for every birthday for fifty years and never once wrote the recipe down".

Where to keep it so it is actually used

A finished obituary in a drawer nobody opens is worth very little. The failure mode is simple: the family writes their own in a rush because they do not know yours exists. Fix that with three steps.

• Tell two people. The person most likely to organise your funeral, and one backup. Say the words "I have written my own obituary, it is here, please use it."
• Keep it with the other end-of-life paperwork. Alongside your funeral wishes and the list of accounts and passwords from your digital legacy planning checklist, not in a random folder on a laptop that will be locked when it is needed.
• Consider a scheduled delivery. If you would rather not have the conversation now, a dead man's switch email can deliver the obituary draft, your funeral wishes and a personal note to the right people only after you stop responding to check-ins. It is a way of making sure the document arrives without having to hand it over in person.

Revisit it, but not often

An obituary written at forty will need updating at sixty. Once every few years is plenty: a new grandchild, a move, a retirement. Put the date at the top of the document so the family knows how current it is, and do not let the maintenance become a reason not to start. A slightly out-of-date obituary written in your voice is far better than a perfectly current one written by a stranger.

When not to write your own

If you are in the middle of a family estrangement, a divorce, or a serious diagnosis that is changing week to week, a draft written now may say things you would not say later. Write the biography part, which does not change, and leave the "survived by" paragraph and the tone for calmer months. And if the idea of writing it makes you feel worse rather than lighter, that is a signal to talk to someone first; the obituary can wait.

The point of all of this is not the document. It is that, on a hard day, the people you love will open a page and hear you in it.