I love a good obituary...

though I would certainly trade my existing brother for a David Bowie impersonator.

I know Angela Bowie.....would that count?

Doubt I have the imagination and sense of humor, but I could do a long list of "Screw you ______."

good kids to have written it

my last deceased husband wrote his own obituary and it was charming... I liked this sentence: "________ was born in Queens, NY, but only because his parents lived there, he would have preferred to be born in Vermont..."

She used it to give factual details about her life that few people knew. At 90 she had outlived her siblings, cousins, husband, and two of her four children. She chose to acknowledge her birth surname and family in the obit, which the relatives who raised her had refused to do all her life.

It's a very long story, but the basic detail is that her mother had died giving birth to her. She was a preemie who needed special care so her aunt took her to another city and state to raise as her own and refused to give up custody later or to tell my mother about her biological parents and siblings. The aunt gave my mother the aunt's married surname. My mother learned the truth through paternal relatives who tracked her down.

So she set the "official record" straight in her obit about who her parents and siblings were.

"Isaac Asimov was born in the Soviet Union to his great surprise. He moved quickly to correct the situation. When his parents immigrated to the United States Isaac (three years old at the time) stowed away in the baggage."

This text was copied from my 1991 Bantam edition of I, Robot.

a disconcerting number of cell phones.

I, too, would be willing to bet that Beth wrote that herself.

Now after I have watched the Irish funeral, I am thinking of what kind of prank I can pull. I actually do not want a funeral or any type of ceremony, but that doesn't mean I can't pull a prank.

Might be a good brainstorming thread to start sometime, ya' think?

Thank you for sharing this glimpse into her life.

What an absolutely lovely (and loving) send off. Kudos.

So much better than those vomit-inducing obits with statements like "she's now sitting next to the Lord our savior" or "God has called him home"...blah, blah, barf.