In between summers when I was in college, I worked as an intern on my hometown newspaper. My first job was calling funeral homes to find out who had died. Obituaries were an important section of the paper.

I would be sent down to the basement where the newspaper’s “morgue” was located to bring up past stories about a recently deceased citizen. This was before the days of digital storage. The morgue was a kind of library of past news articles.

At my young age, death seemed remote, but it dawned on me that the only certain story about anybody was their obituary. For the famous, it already was stored in the morgue because death, even more than taxes, was certain. Someday it would be used. As a person accrued honors or elective office, the facts became current news, but they also entered that person’s obituary file.

When a famous (or infamous) person dies, the story is already written, now waiting in an online file, except for the immediate circumstances of death.

My current hometown newspaper carries the obituaries of most who die in our area. If we haven’t known the deceased since childhood, the obituary surprises us with information we didn’t know about former marriages, former jobs, former honors, association with historic events.

Some may not wish to think of death’s inevitability. For others, it acts as a reminder to joy in the gift left to us.

“Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.”
(John Donne)