I know you’ve been clamoring for updates on The Year of Books or Year of Reading or whatever it is I dubbed my quest to read 20 books this year. Well sometimes life gets in the way of your best intentions. That is not to say I gave up, but rather didn’t have a chance to chronicle the latest ones. Between seemingly simultaneous trips, ending an old job, looking for a new job, packing and moving, this space has been neglected, but I have been reading!

So here goes.

I’m still not sure what to make of the timing of this one. A lot of times I’ll get 75 percent through a book and put off the end for a few days. With “The Dead Beat” by Marilyn Johnson, those few days changed the tone with which I read.

In the simplest description, it’s a book about obituaries. Most people my age don’t pay much attention to the often last chronicles of peoples lives printed in their local paper. But if you have taken journalism classes you probably had to delve into the world of writing about the dead.

That process can be a fascinating way to learn incredible things about seemingly “normal” people. Or if your professor allows, you can decide the obit being written about you for class can include details of dying after being kicked in the chest by a kangaroo during a boxing match at Madison Square Garden. I’m sure I have always been a treat to have in class.

Johnson doesn’t have to make up the absurd to delve into the art of the obit. She goes through the American and British papers who truly have turned this type of story into something to be studied. She even spends time at a convention of obit writers and readers who come together each year to discuss the craft and the latest in the world of last writings. During her discussion of playwright Arthur Miller’s obit, I learned he was the father-in-law of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

She does a great job of setting up the “debate” in the obit world, the decision of who gets that honored spot each day and how the story is written. Johnson breaks down the stylistic differences between those who stick to the easy details and those who pull no punches in lampooning characters who quite frankly deserve it.

But perhaps the most poignant part of the book comes as she talks to one of the pioneers in modern U.S. obits. His name is Jim Nicholson, and he wrote for the Philadelphia Daily News. At the time of their interactions Nicholson had retired and was caring for his wife who had Alzheimer’s. He talks about getting out of a formulaic approach to the process, especially when talking to the family about their lost loved one:

“Everyone who comes in the house or calls on the phone is trying their best to out-mourn everyone else. You get a steady diet of that for three or four days, and I call up and talk regular, just like I’m talking to you, it’s a breath of fresh air. I ask about his favorite breakfast food, what kind of disciplinarian was she, did she let you have that hamster or doge the first time you asked. I’d wind up asking the questions that people who live with you all your life never end up asking.”

Unfortunately you can’t really time when that subject is going to come up. Sometimes you have an idea that the end may be near, but even then the final seconds are always a surprise. I mentioned before the few days I took off before finishing this book. I went to North Carolina for a camping trip with my brothers and some of my brother’s friends. That Saturday we got a call that our grandfather had died.

And so it was a week of making arrangements to fly home, spend time with a family that seemingly “just” did this process three years ago with our grandmother. I don’t know if it was more comforting that we knew the routine–same funeral home, same cemetery, same pastor. But I do remember feeling like I was in a movie when we arrived at the burial to see a military honor guard and the ceremony that came with it–three-shot volley, presentation of the flag from the casket to my aunt, salutes as the procession arrived.

I left work and went straight to the airport to fly home. While waiting for my flight in Jacksonville I read “He left many things well begun,” a line Johnson quotes from an obit in her collection. I’m not sure I would have read that line the same way had I finished the book a few days before.

From the Loudoun Times-Mirror, Col. Chester W. McDowell, Jr.