biography for my father

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A short biography of my father

As I've already mentioned online somewhere, my father died in late November. His memorial service will be held in February, at the church he attended. I wrote up a short biography for the pastors at the church to refer to in their eulogy (or whatever it is called that is read out at a memorial service) and I thought I'd post it here too, as a sort of closure. It is admittedly the 'good' version of my father's life, and leaves out a lot, but it is what I think is most fitting.

Masamichi Itoh was born in 1936 in Tokyo. His parents were Salvation Army officers working at a Salvation Army hospital. They were Christians, which was very unusual for Japanese people at that time. While he was evacuated to the countryside during the war, he spent most of his youth in Tokyo. Years later he remembered always being hungry as a child, especially in the postwar period, and his mother struggling to feed six children. He was the oldest.

From an early age he was very interested in America and learning English. In his teens he had more than 25 penpals in America, all but one of whom were girls, most of them blonde. His favorite American actress was June Allyson. When he entered college in the '50s, he grew his hair into a "regent" - a big fluffy pompadour at front, like James Dean - and frequented the dance halls of Tokyo, dancing the boogie woogie.

At the age of 26 he married Michiko Munemura, a 21 year old girl with big eyes. It was an arranged marriage, the usual way young people got married in Japan at the time. They eventually had three daughters - Makiko, Mayumi and Megumi. Makiko lives in France, Mayumi in Japan, and Megumi in Florida. He also has two grandchildren, Lyoh and Lena.

His English ability and his interest in travelling abroad finally came together in his early 30s, when he was sent to England by his company to cultivate business there. He was their sole representative in Europe for 5 years. After six months he was joined by his wife and two older daughters (daughter no. 3 was born later in the United States). Life was tough sometimes, but looking back later he said he really enjoyed his time in England.

After several years in England and a year in New York, he and his family returned to Tokyo. But back in Japan, he did not feel like he fit into his company anymore. Unhappy, he took the drastic step of resigning - a very unusual thing to do for a Japanese salaryman in the 1970s. He found another job back in New York and the family moved once more.

Perhaps because of so many moves, the marriage became too strained, and he divorced from his wife a few years later. He eventually found friendship and a purpose in life again when he joined the Universal Church, which became the center of his spiritual and social life. He found it very fulfilling to serve on the church's board, especially after retirement. That and his friends here [in New York] were the main reasons why he decided to live out his retirement in New York rather than going back to Japan.

Masamichi had a lifelong love of good food, movies, and travel. He used to keep file folders full of the business cards of restaurants he visited around the world. When he was in his 60s, he went back to dance class again to boogie woogie once more.

(See also: Doing business as a Japanese businessman in the '60s and '70s' )

Comments on this post:

Thank you for sharing.

Did you parents decide to keep the M name going or is that something that Japanese families do traditionally? We almost did that with our son. But I decided I didn't want tradition and his name is so strange to most people anyway that I just like it. Even though it's a really old English name. Your Father really lived a vibrant life, or at least it sounds that way! Thank you so much for sharing!

The M thing is just a

The M thing is just a coincidence, definitely not any kind of tradition. Though when it came time to name my youngest sister my parents may have looked for an M-name on purpose.

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Andre Gerard's top 10 father memoirs

The concept of father memoirs is a fascinating one. Confronting fathers directly and publicly is not, and never has been, easy: the patriarch should judge and not be judged. To write about the father is to sit in judgment upon him, and for most cultures this was a taboo too strong to be overcome. The Greeks, despite their searingly perceptive stories about father-child interactions, did not attempt to do so – nor did the Romans, the Italians of the Renaissance, the Elizabethans or even the Romantics. Paradoxically – but not surprisingly, given the rigid paternalism of the age and the attendant psychological pressures – personal father writing, like radical feminism, is a product of the Victorian era.

In 1907, six years after the death of Queen Victoria, Edmund Gosse published Father and Son. Once the taboo was broken, writers were quick to take advantage of the new possibilities. The 20th century saw a steady increase in the number of father memoirs and, now that the boomers are ageing and seeking to immortalise themselves, such memoirs are becoming as ubiquitous as tattoos. As with tattoos, some are visceral works of art. The 10 books described below give an idea of how poignant, rich and rewarding father memoirs can be.

1: Father and Son by Edmund Gosse

The first of all father memoirs, this is still one of the best. Interestingly, Gosse's first attempt to write about his father took the form of an official biography. Written shortly after his father's death on 23 August 1888, The Life of Philip Henry Gosse was admired by Henry James as "a singularly clever, skilful, vivid, well-done biography of his father, the fanatic and naturalist – very happy in proportion, tact and talent". Luckily, at least two other readers – John Addington Symonds and George Moore – suggested that Gosse should be more autobiographical and explore the father-son relationship.

Almost 20 years later, Gosse unburdened himself of Father and Son. Though the book was an immediate success and the reviews were largely enthusiastic, the reviewer of the Academy had reservations about the "close anatomisation by a son of a father", and the Times Literary Supplement raised the question of "how far in the interests of popular edification or amusement it is legitimate to expose the weaknesses and inconsistencies of a good man who is also one's father". Perhaps not always fortunately, subsequent writers, far more frank and confessional, showed far fewer qualms in writing about their fathers.

2: Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

As Art Spiegelman proved with Maus , father memoirs can take graphic narrative form. Courageously original and lovingly honest, Fun Home is a coming-of-age story – a story of lesbian self-discovery – which also outs the father posthumously as a closeted gay man and a possible suicide. In intertwining her father's story with her own, Bechdel is conscious of being as ruthless as her father was in "his monomaniacal restoration of our old house". She, too, is a Daedalus, who answers "not to the laws of society, but to those of [her] craft".

Profoundly personal, Fun Home is also mythic. From the opening page onwards, it is a rich affirmation of Stephen Dedalus's closing words in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man: "Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead." This affirmation is triumphantly validated by "the tricky reverse narration" of Fun Home's final panels, in which Bechdel's artistically resurrected, epic father is there to catch and save her child self.

3: The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father, by Mary Gordon

Mary Gordon sketches a passionate portrait of a deeply flawed man, a shabby pornographer with literary pretensions, a convert to Christianity who was so ashamed of his immigrant and Jewish origins that he hid his past and became a nasty antisemite and a writer of speeches for Joe McCarthy. In the course of investigating her father's life and of reflecting on the motives for her search, she also had his bones dug up and reburied.

The intensity of her obsession with her father, who died when she was only seven, is terrifying – yet readily understandable. The father of her childhood, after all, was not a real human being. He was a fairytale father, an Angela Carter father, a "magic uncle", a Pied Piper strewing candy and trailing kids. In trying to find her "real" father, in trying to come to terms with the lies her father told her, Gordon confesses: "I have done things to my father. I have remembered him, researched him, investigated him, exposed him, invented him." The one thing she cannot do is exorcise him.

Gordon is a spiritual sister to Sylvia Plath – who lost her father when she was eight – and despite her ironies, her literary inventiveness, her distancing techniques, she cannot escape the curse of victimhood her father's early death bequeathed her.

4: There is a Season, by Patrick Lane

"I circle my father's death for a means to get close. I remember my Uncle Jack pushing my head into my father's coffin. The taste of lipstick and powder will stay on my lips for ever. Kiss him, he cried, Kiss your father goodbye." There is a cruel courage in how Patrick Lane dwells on the memory of his murdered father and voices pain and grief. In the breathtaking, breath-giving tradition of Derek Jarman's Modern Nature, There Is a Season turns to nature and gardens for healing from the hurtful, painful wonder of life. With this fierce book, Lane, fulfilling a promise he made in an early father poem, Fathers and Sons, reaches "down into the heavy earth" and sings his father "back into the day", and himself free of the poisons of drugs and alcohol. There Is a Season is a lyrical masterpiece to be treasured by all recovering alcoholics, avid gardeners and lovers of Annie Dillard and Thoreau.

5: Patrimony: A True Story, by Philip Roth

While Patrimony's title hints at a postmodern game, there is nothing playful about the clear-eyed, plain-spoken integrity with which Philip Roth observes his father's dying and remembers his father's life. The father lives on in the "modest no-frills style", and the book is remarkable as a strong tribute paid by a strong son to a strong father.

Despite simplicity of style, Patrimony is an epic, with Roth as a Hercules labouring on his father's behalf. In fierce, moving, often comic vignettes he takes on a ghoulish, hate-filled neighbour, a psychotic cab driver, denial of antisemitism by Metropolitan Life, a pornographic Holocaust survivor, a quintuple bypass, his father's shit, and, repeatedly, his father himself. In a previous book, The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography, Roth had said of his father that "narrative is the form his knowledge takes". In Patrimony, he links his father's narrative gifts to memory: "You mustn't forget anything – that's the inscription on his coat of arms. To be alive, to him, is to be made of memory – to him if a man's not made of memory, he's made of nothing."

Memory and narrative, along with the shit of "nothing less or more than lived reality", are Roth's patrimony – a patrimony he transmutes into this profound and heartfelt testament. Book, son and father merge into "the vernacular, unpoetic and expressive and pointblank, with all the vernacular's glaring limitations, and all its durable force".

6: Swing Low: A Life, by Miriam Toews

Many father memoirs are remarkable for their inventive excellence, but few are as original and as powerful as Swing Low. Miriam Toews imagines herself into her father's head, and brings him back to life as a narrative "I". Her imaginative accomplishment is all the more remarkable in that her father had bipolar disorder throughout his life, and eventually his depression became so deep and his mind so confused that he killed himself by stepping in front of a train.

Such a story would be horrific and depressing if it weren't for the calmness of the narrative voice. Toews's father was a Mennonite living and teaching in a small Manitoba town, and in her rendering of his interior life Toews also explores the tensions between self and community and teases out "the complicated kindness" that makes those tensions almost bearable. Despite the father's mental illness and suicide, Swing Low is a wonderfully sane and life-affirming book.

7: The Duke of Deception, by Geoffrey Wolff

"My father was a bullshit artist." Geoffrey Wolff's book about his scapegrace, conman father suggests you don't have to be a good father to have successful children; some children succeed despite their fathers. Wolff and his brother, Tobias, the author of This Boy's Life, are proof of that – as are, say, Winston Churchill or Michael and Christopher Ondaatje, three other highly successful men who have written wonderfully well about damaged, damaging fathers.

Father memoirs or essays sometimes provide the means for children to come to terms with negligent or destructive fathers. One strength of The Duke of Deception is the relish with which Wolff describes his father's failings. Wolff almost seems to take pride in the fact that his father was "lavish with money, others' money", and that he "was a lie, through and through". Yet there is nothing sentimental, mean or vindictive in Wolff's portrait of his father. In trying to make sense of his father and of himself, Wolff constantly tries to distinguish between "what we feel and what we should feel". The result is unflinchingly honest – a ruefully frank, loving testament and a brilliant book.

8: My Father's Fortune: A Life, by Michael Frayn

There are many kinds of father memoirs. Some are bitter and vindictive. Others are exercises in detection. Still others are meditations on disease or death. My Father's Fortune belongs to two further categories, the tribute patremoir and the sociological. Its closest peers, perhaps, are Doris Lessing's Alfred and Emily and Alan Bennett's study of his father in Untold Stories . Like Lessing and Bennett, Frayn uses his father to study the impact of class, community and historical accident on a life. Through his father he vividly resurrects his East Ewell, Surrey, neighbourhood, along with the struggles and aspirations of London's citizens, both during the second world war and after. Like Bennett, too, he uses gentle humour to bring his father to life again, though where Bennett's father is defined by "my suit" and "my other suit", Frayn links his father to a black homburg, "the last homburg in south-east London, perhaps in western Europe". Beautifully written, a generous, loving tribute to a plucky father and the gritty world that shaped him, My Father's Fortune begins and ends with the father's smile.

9: My Two Wars, by Moritz Thomsen

Moritz Thomsen starts his book by saying: "This is a book about my involvement with two outrageous catastrophes – the second world war and my father." Had he limited himself to the second world war, he might well have produced a brilliant book. His account of flying B-17 sorties from a base near Cambridge is riveting, filled with "the normal self-loathing of a bombardier", and conjuring up a harrowing Hieronymus Bosch world in which "we were as sacred, as moral, as marvellous, as necessary to Earth's intentions as ants". It is the claustrophobic, nightmare world of Randall Jarrell 's ball turret gunner .

Where the book breaks down is in its handling of the father. The best patremoirs are difficult journeys of self-discovery, as much about the writer as the father. Even if you are a good writer, it takes perspective, if not maturity, to write well about your father; and for every good patremoir, there are dozens of bad ones, books that are only published because of topical or sensational secondary material – incest or Alzheimer's are popular subjects – or because the parent is a celebrity. My Two Wars is much better than such books, yet it is too angry and raw to achieve its full promise. Top 10 lists are arbitrary things, and this book is on my list because of what it might have been, rather than because of what it is.

10: The Measure of a Man: the Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit, by JJ Lee

JJ Lee's book is fashioned with wisdom and restraint. Like the violin in Thomas Hardy's To My Father's Violin , Lee's father's suit functions as an object on which to hang emotions. It provides depth and distance. Lee skilfully uses the history of suits, and his own attempts at tailoring, to show how we construct ourselves, how we fashion ourselves as men. Like James Baldwin or Raymond Carver, he is writing about a failed father, and emotional distance is necessary to guard against anger or destructive bitterness.

Part of the pleasure of this book is that tailoring is for Lee what whaling was for Melville, and as the patremoir progresses Lee's suit becomes charged with almost as much symbolism as the white of the whale. Even if Lee shows the slow and painful disintegration of his father, the ravages of alcohol, the consequent damage inflicted on wife and children, there is no bleakness or self-pity in the telling. Even if Lee's 89-year-old mentor and father surrogate was forced into tailoring by racism, and even if the Chinamen's cemetery in Montreal was "the place to bury the people no one really wanted around", the focus of this book is not racism. This is a story about self-fashioning, about taking what you have been given, or have been left, and making the best of it.

Andre Gerard is the founder of Patremoir Press and the editor of Fathers: a Literary Anthology

• Biography books
• Autobiography and memoir
• Philip Roth
• Michael Frayn

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When you create a LIFEstory BOOK, you discover one’s true essence.

Magic happens when you create a lifestory book.

This is especially true when referring to your mother or father. When you create a lifestory book for a loved-one, it gives you an opportunity to look at that person through an objective lens. You get a whole new perspective and your image of them can change right before your eyes… like magic.

I have been working on a LIFEstory book for my father. It’s fascinating to see someone’s character traits and personality over the span of a lifetime. You can see the constants that keep percolating and I consider those to be one’s true core essence.

Your core essence is what makes you uniquely “you”. Your core essence is what separates each person in their individuality.

Research supports the old saying, “ You can’t judge a book by its cover “. When you first meet a person, it is their personality that creates that first impression. It is generally an accurate assessment. Research has shown that personality traits are largely hereditary. Funny, introverted, optimistic, energetic, negative, shy, etc. — these are largely unchanging.

Conversely, one’s character is something discovered over time. It is based on repeated interactions with a person. Character traits are based on beliefs. Honesty, kindness, hard-working, treating others well are some examples. These are arguably more pliable, however not without significant effort. Then of course one needs to have the desire.

I will create a LIFEstory book for my father

My dad is almost 89 years old. I loved gathering his meaningful and memorable life stories, answers to questions on values, purpose and what’s important in life. It took some convincing that he had valuable information to share. Once engaged in the conversation and to my great surprise, he opened up and I am grateful for it.

I have known my dad for over 52 years, but it wasn’t until I asked him these specific questions that I understood him fully. In doing so, I learned the thoughts and beliefs that influenced the wonderful character traits I so admire. I am very happy that I asked. Not only has this provided me a new perspective of my father, but I can also better understand who I am.

Our Essence — The Core of Who We Are

Someone’s personality and character traits create the core essence of a person. It is what you might say if asked to describe them. In turn, our core essence will be our legacy. The impression we leave on others is the impression we will leave behind one day. I am so lucky to have my dad as a role model. He was integral in shaping my character, my beliefs and in turn part of my core essence.

On my dad’s 89th birthday, I will give him this LIFEstory book. I hope that it will impact him positively and expect it will result in tears as he is much more sentimental as the years go on! It captures photos, stories, facts and thoughts about his life. Of equal or maybe even more importance, I have also put in these words into print:

“Thank you dad, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being who you are and for helping me to be who I am today.”

Questions To Ask Your Father

I have a long list of questions that I choose from to create a personalized questionnaire made specifically for each client, to reflect their unique life. Some of the questions are obvious, like where and when were you born, who were your parents, list your siblings, etc. These are more factual and can include things like identifying major life events, accomplishments and milestones.

Where it gets interesting is when you start to ask questions about relationships, feelings, and specific memories that generate smiles or sadness.

When someone has lived a very long life, it is hard to remember things from way back when. It is not really important to recount all of the specific details of one’s life, but rather the memories and the actions or thoughts that reflect someone’s true essence, their personality, the shaping of their character.

A LIFEBOOK is more of a coffee table style book, something someone could pick up and be able to enjoy and appreciate in one sitting. It captures the highlights of someone’s life story, as it siphons stories to capture their impact or meaning.

When it comes to interviewing parents, you will be surprised at the amount of stories that start to flow. It is a very different conversation as adults and since you are expressing interest, they feel happy to share.

For example a great life story interview question would be “What was it like to become a grandfather and how did it make you feel?”, “What advice would you like to pass on to your grandchildren?”, “What is something that most people don’t know about you?”.

Even more interesting are the lessons learned. When someone has lived a full life, experienced in some cases wars, great inventions, tragedies and triumphs, it allows them to put life into a broader perspective than those of us who haven’t lived nearly as long.

Questions like “What would you tell your younger self?” or “What was on your bucket list as a young adult and how did that change when you got older?” is when you may learn a few things that you didn’t know before. In fact, you father may be surprised at his own answers, because it is not every day that someone asks for their opinion or for their advice on life!

Life Stories Become Legacies

This LIFEBOOK along with my sentiments of appreciation for my father will be part of his legacy one day. The pictures and words will be viewed and enjoyed by his grandchildren and his eventual great grandchildren, etc. I am sure my father’s essence will continue to live on. Many of his personality traits will be passed on genetically. The character traits will hopefully be shaped in our children by the examples we set for them. Thanks to my parents, and the stories that are told about those who came before us.

If you would like to experience the benefits that come to all those involved when you create a LIFEstory book for a parent, I would be happy to help. You can fill in a 2-minute quiz I will get back to you with recommendations. Together we will create something that reflects your father or mother perfectly, without breaking the bank.

Each LIFEBOOK is very personal and I have made it especially simple to make. A personalized questionnaire helps you to capture the essence of you father’s and tell the stories of his life. That is when a beautiful coffee table style book can be created. It will be a gift that gives for generations.

Happy discovering!

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How to Write a Biography for a Funeral Program + Examples

Updated 05/11/2022

Published 03/10/2021

Belinda McLeod, BA in Secondary Education

Contributing writer

Cake values integrity and transparency. We follow a strict editorial process to provide you with the best content possible. We also may earn commission from purchases made through affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more in our affiliate disclosure .

After a person dies, someone in the family usually writes a biography or obituary about the person. This task sometimes falls to a friend or the funeral director may also help with the writing process. 

You may then submit the biography or obituary to the newspaper through the funeral home. Most newspapers charge families a per-word rate to print the article. You may also write the obituary for the funeral program on the funeral home’s website.

Check out our tips for writing a biography for a funeral. We will also give you short biography examples to help you with your task of telling your loved one’s life story. 

Jump ahead to these sections:

Steps for writing a biography for a funeral, funeral biography samples.

Think of a biography (or obituary) as a news article informing the general public about a death that occurred. Even though you may feel emotional when writing an obituary, this is not typically the outlet for writing about your feelings. 

Even though the biography is an informative article, it is up to you to include the details. You can include pretty much whatever you want, but it’s a good idea to get the family’s general consensus regarding what you will write about in the biography.

The number and types of details may vary, depending on the person and where the biography or obituary will be used. A biography (or obituary) read at a funeral may include more details than one printed in the newspaper or funeral program . 

Step 1: Start with the general facts

You want to identify the deceased first. Use the full name (with the maiden name in parentheses) and the age of the person. If the deceased had an often-used nickname, consider putting it in quotes. 

The more identification factors you use makes it less likely that your loved one gets mistaken for someone else. This is especially important if your loved one had a common name. 

Step 2: Consider including the essential dates in the obituary

Some families choose to include the birth date and death date of the deceased in the obituary. You can present this information in a variety of ways. 

Others avoid giving this detailed information in hopes of limiting the likelihood of fraudulent activity. You may provide partial information, such as “She was born to Bob and Mary Smith in October 1982.”

Step 3: Consider including the cause of death

The family must decide whether or not to include the cause of death. Most people who read the biography will wonder, “What happened?” This question may seem nosy to you, but it is only human nature to be curious about such matters. 

Some families choose to leave this information out of the biography, which is their prerogative. Others may view it as a piece of information that may be helpful to future generations. Some may give partial information, such as “Mary Frankie Jones, 65, passed away after a long illness.”

Step 4: Include information about the early life of the deceased

Most people choose to include the names of the parents of the deceased as well as the city of birth. Again, only include specific information if you feel comfortable; some unscrupulous individuals use this biographical information for nefarious purposes.

You may consider including where the deceased graduated high school and/or college. Include any brief military service during this section of the biography as well.

Step 5: Include other family information

Often, you list a deceased person’s marriages in the article chronologically and list children at the end of the article as “survivors to the deceased.”

For some, it’s easy to write about the deceased’s spouse but makes a difficult task for others. Again, there are no “rules” on who to include, so you and your family must make those determinations.

People agonize over whether to include estranged family members. You may also wonder whether to label stepchildren differently than biological children. Ex-spouses and long-term partners that never marry may pause you as you write the obituary. 

Each situation is different, so most etiquette guides recommend that people do their best to keep their relationships with their living family members intact by not limiting the list of survivors in the obituary. 

Step 6: Write about your loved one’s professional life

A funeral biography is not the same as a resume, but most people give at least some general information about how the deceased earned a living. 

If the deceased worked his entire adult life at one place of business, you would include this detail in the obituary. If he job-hopped but stayed in the same industry, you may include a sentence about his profession.

You may make this section of the biography longer for those with active careers. 

Step 7: Consider including information about community involvement

Many families choose to include their loved one’s involvement in community groups. For example, you may choose to include the deceased’s involvement in a specific church, civic organization, or volunteer group. You may also want to include any offices that the deceased held in any of these organizations as well as any awards earned. 

Step 8: Add any details that made your loved one special

There’s much more to life than work and club memberships. Think about other details you could include in the biography that would help people understand what made your loved one unique. 

Perhaps you want to write about how she was a Star Wars superfan and waited in line each time a new film was released. Maybe your loved one was an avid camper and fisherman and spent each weekend in a tent. 

You may want to write a lengthy exposition about what made your loved one special, which you should do. Use this information to write your loved one’s eulogy or share your writing with close family members. Depending on where you publish it, you may find your writing limited by the amount of space available. 

To get you started in your writing process, read these short, fictional obituary snippets. 

For a parent or grandparent

Douglas Richard Schrute, 82, passed away peacefully in his home on Monday, June 23, 2020. His wife of 53 years was by his side at the time of death.

Douglas was born on December 22, 1938, to Richard and Mary (Sullivan) Schrute in Elmwood, Illinois. He was the fourth son born to the couple. 

After graduating from Elmwood High School, he joined the U.S. Army, serving his country in Korea.

For a child or grandchild

Mary Kate is survived by her parents, Michael and Patricia Carmichael, and one brother, Cole. Other survivors include her maternal grandparents, John and Tawnya Crabtree, and her paternal grandparents, Frank and Louise Carmichael. 

For a partner or spouse

Peter worked in the telecommunications industry all his life. He began his career at Southwestern Bell in 1973 and retired from AT&T in 2018. He worked as a technical salesperson for most of his professional life. 

For an adult without immediate family

Michael will always be remembered by his friends as the “man of 1,000 stories.” He began each conversation by saying, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before,” which no one ever did. He was the life of the party, and laughter followed him wherever he went. 

For someone who died after a long illness

Jack passed away Friday, December 8, after a long battle with lung cancer. 

The family wishes to express appreciation to the Elmwood Hospice organization for helping make his transition to heaven as peaceful as possible.

Take Great Care When Writing the Biography of a Loved One

If you are in charge of making all of the arrangements, you may find yourself overwhelmed by your list of “to-do” items. 

Even though you may find yourself pressed for time, carefully consider the wording of your loved one’s biography or obituary. Take care to be as accurate as possible by double-checking dates, the spelling of names, and other facts. 

Anytime you write something of this level of importance, it is good to have other family members and friends check the piece for accuracy, clarity, and grammar. Have others proofread the funeral program as well and help you pick which modern funeral program to include. 

You only have one chance to write the obituary of your loved one, so take your time as you complete this task. 

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