Every weekend, the Sunday New York Times arrives with a thud on our front porch around midnight on Saturday. Brent gave me a subscription for Valentine’s Day this year after he overheard me longing for the ritual of morning newspaper reading at a neighbor’s dinner party. It’s been good for me. World and political news are hard to read these days, but once I get through it, I dig into the back sections over breakfast for the rest of the week.
I don’t spend a lot of time on the Obit page, but I scan it just in case. Yesterday, there was only one that caught my eye. It was at the very bottom of the last column on the right. I liked the man’s face, but the real draw was the brevity. All the other ones were long and full of credentials and history. The person who wrote this one got right to the point:
Sedman – Yale S. — May 22, 1929 – September 16, 2020. Biologist, professor, Weber grill master, gardener, storyteller, wit, husband of Ann, constant mower of lawns and shoveler of snow – happy 95th birthday. We (and the cicadas) miss you.
I tore this perfect obit out and tacked it to our kitchen bulletin board with the intention of sharing it with Brent. Something like this, I told him later, is what I want when the time comes. We both got a little teary when I read it to him, not because of the inevitable, but because Ann so clearly loves her husband. How lucky they both are that she could tell us so much about herself and the man she loves in two short sentences. There’s a whole story being told here. She gives us enough to fill in the blanks.
Thank you for a year of writing Fellow Human. Your reading it has been my inspiration.
Love,
Bar
The obit is like a poem as it beauty is condensed in so few words.