DEATH BECOMES HER

By Mandy Malone

My work as an obituary writer is quite unpredictable. People handle grief in different ways and I have to be prepared for anything when someone comes to our lobby to place an obituary.

Today, however, I was brought face to face with one of the strangest situations I have ever faced when a man came in today to place an obituary for his dying mother.

Back in January 2005 a mother and son came to our lobby at deadline to place an obituary for the woman’s husband. This seems normal enough, but the man’s mother was suffering from dementia and began wandering around the newsroom, rearranging pictures and walking into offices. The son, who had a few problems of his own, did not want his mother to know that her husband had died, so he told his mother that they were at the Shipyard and I was a secretary.

Forty-five minutes and several phone calls to a relative he disliked later, we had an obituary he was happy with and this became one of the more colorful episodes in my obituary writing career.

Well, this afternoon, the man came back. His mother is dying and he thought he had left her obituary with us. He had not and became quite belligerent and stormed off I told him that while we still had his father’s obituary photo, he had not left us with anything other than that.

While I wait to see how the next chapter in this situation plays out, I thought I would ask readers of the blog about their strange and unusual encounters with people and how they handled them. Certainly I am not the only one who has these encounters, although some days it seems like I attract them like a magnet.