I started (ghoulishly?) carefully reading the obits in the small-town Maine newspaper which we subscribe to, from a 500-mile distance. I count the number of deaths, note how many are in what I consider the normal dying cohort (85+), how many shouldn't be dying--because younger. How many 'died at home in the presence of loved ones (or fam…
I started (ghoulishly?) carefully reading the obits in the small-town Maine newspaper which we subscribe to, from a 500-mile distance. I count the number of deaths, note how many are in what I consider the normal dying cohort (85+), how many shouldn't be dying--because younger. How many 'died at home in the presence of loved ones (or family)', how many died 'unexpectedly'. Recently, one notice attributed death to 'complications of Covid'--this surprised me. In July, a young 20-ish fellow died 'after a 9 day battle with cancer'. Yup. Those two stood out as screaming the truth--all other notices hide it. However, because I was, until recently, completely uninterested in death notices, I don't have any basis for comparison--did notices before 2021 tend to mention cause of death? I have come to assume that newspapers don't permit truth-telling. Any commenter with any back-up for this assumption? Last week's paper had 9 obits; 6 of them --in my totally biased opinion--shouldn't have been on that page at all. And I am not even going into the surprising write-ups of auto accidents--death-dealing or not.
I started (ghoulishly?) carefully reading the obits in the small-town Maine newspaper which we subscribe to, from a 500-mile distance. I count the number of deaths, note how many are in what I consider the normal dying cohort (85+), how many shouldn't be dying--because younger. How many 'died at home in the presence of loved ones (or family)', how many died 'unexpectedly'. Recently, one notice attributed death to 'complications of Covid'--this surprised me. In July, a young 20-ish fellow died 'after a 9 day battle with cancer'. Yup. Those two stood out as screaming the truth--all other notices hide it. However, because I was, until recently, completely uninterested in death notices, I don't have any basis for comparison--did notices before 2021 tend to mention cause of death? I have come to assume that newspapers don't permit truth-telling. Any commenter with any back-up for this assumption? Last week's paper had 9 obits; 6 of them --in my totally biased opinion--shouldn't have been on that page at all. And I am not even going into the surprising write-ups of auto accidents--death-dealing or not.