Others’ Obituaries Commemorate Life

Marti Parker’s letter of April 9 is correct. The media shouldn’t intrude on a family’s grief.

I have the story about Nadia Puente’s funeral and others like it. I have kept them for a special reason. Last year, a friend died. I never got to say goodby. That wasn’t a word in the vocabulary of this friend’s family. Words of hope and cheer were, although we all knew what the outcome would be when the disease ran its course.

After my friend’s death, there was no obituary, no funeral, no burial, no memorial. That is why I collect obituaries and articles on death and dying. I keep a scrapbook with the obits and articles on death and dying. I keep a scrapbook with the obits and stories of funerals and memorial services for the friend who had none of these.

To some, this may seem odd, but I’ve never before faced such a thing. Deaths, yes. Funerals, yes. But never such silence and never such aloneness. There may be grief groups for parents who lose children, families whose loss was through violence, for widows and widowers, but there is no group for people who lose friends. Or is there?

PATRICIA A. BAYLEY

Anaheim