Lives Well Told, if Not Always Well Lived

Some recent excerpts from paid newspaper obituaries:

* “Mother attended Brigham Young University just long enough to write the school song, only to discover that drinking coffee truly was prohibited.”

* “No one liked a good joke better than he did and he told them often. He even liked the bad ones and told them often also.”

* “No dust ever settled on her furniture, and she could make such a snug bed you needed a shoehorn to tuck yourself in.”

* “He loved the Gospel and food storage.”

* “A special thanks . . . to the BYU football team for making his last day on earth so enjoyable.”

* An ex-steelworker and outdoorsman “carried pain and loneliness his entire life” and “was fostered, adopted, abused and abandoned by his family, but not his friends.”

* “To the lady who stole his savings, ‘You are Forgiven, Find Jesus.’ ”

* “Hyacinths, daffodils, the Holy Land, Michelangelo and the American Flag were her favorites. Take away gum chewers and the east winds, and she felt her life was perfect.”

* One woman was “a young 27 years of age when a car traveling northbound on Tooele Highway entered her lane and took the most loving, beautiful, unselfish woman that God put on this Earth.”

* “She graciously accepted the fact that her only grandchildren would have four legs, a tail and a bark.”

* A piano teacher admonished in his own obit: “Everybody--Keep Practicing!”

* “She was well-known for her business ineptness.”

* “Our most sensitive and loving father died in the hands of his best friend, alcoholism. He struggled and fought for years to leave that friend, but he lost. Now that vicious friend is gone and Dad is happy.”

* “He was an avid reader and voracious snowball collector.”

* In 1992, a 41-year-old man died “from complications due to the Reagan-Bush Administration hostile attitudes toward the AIDS pandemic.” The deceased “placed full blame on them and their wanton neglect.”

* “He always said he could weld anything but a broken heart or a crack of dawn.”

* One man was survived by his sister, brother, five grandchildren, two birds, a granddog, two grandcats and one grandrat.

* “Family and friends are pleased to say that she was Meaner than Hell right to the last.”

* “He loved the outdoors, camping, hunting, fishing and going to Wendover, Nev., to partake of the evils.”

* “His easy, offbeat humor, in person and in his writings, was loved and appreciated by his many friends and family . . . but not often by publishers.”

* “My long-term address will be Plat X, Salt Lake City Cemetery.”