'We are not defined by our career' - what obituaries can teach us about living

What can we learn from the lives of the dead? Mary McGreevy is a TikToker who explores just that, by reading obituaries out loud each day. Here's my conversation with her...

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newsletter so I first wanted to say a quick hello and welcome.

I write about grief, in all its forms. Grief is something we will all experience, yet the gnarly, thorny parts are rarely discussed. I wanted to create a space where, through sharing my own stories, and speaking to others about theirs, we could explore the reality of our grief together. I say ‘all forms’ of grief, as I believe there are other deaths that we live through: the death of relationships, of friendships, of lives we thought we might live… We can sometimes feel shame struggling with those moments, as we feel we should “just be grateful” or that our pain isn’t valid. My aim is to show that it is valid, and that by writing and speaking about it, we can help to mend ourselves, and others.

I believe that these conversations are so vital so I will never paywall any letter about grief. However, this newsletter does take time (and emotional energy) so I do have a paid option, which includes access to other pieces of writing, courses and access to my first fiction book, the process of writing it helped me untangle my own grief of losing my mum at 19. You can read more about what I aim to achieve with this newsletter here. But that was written at the very beginning, so here’s a round-up of how the letter has progressed, some of my favourite posts as well as detailing what paid subscribers can get.

Oh, and because the piece I wrote for Things Worth Knowing was all about my child-free life, and how it’s impacted my relationships, here’s a few other pieces I wrote on the subject…

What if I never have children? Saying goodbye to the life I thought I’d have

We can grieve something we never had, a conversation with Ruby Warrington

It’s OK to grieve a friendship that has changed, part two of my conversation with Ruby Warrington

OK! Now onto the latest letter, a short intro from me and then part-one of the chat I had with Mary…

The power of obituaries

There was a time when I wanted to swallow the paragraphs down, digest each sentence, have the words swim into my blood.

In the months following my mum’s death, I’d read her life, her story, over and over again. The obituary, written by a friend of hers, Joyce Macmillan, reminded me who she was, what she stood for. My own memories of my mum were slippery and impossible to grasp at, they had become dark and polluted by the months leading up to her death. My pain pushed her away and the only way to retrieve her was through this tattered, yellowing newspaper clipping.

Since then, I’ve been drawn to the obituaries of strangers. Not so much the write-ups of the lauded, the famous or the notorious, but instead ordinary people, who were extraordinary to the people who loved them. I tear them out and pin them above my desk, they serve to remind me of life’s entirety, how we all tumble and fall, make mistakes but, ultimately, we will all be remembered and loved, by someone.

There are lines in each, often tiny, hidden amidst someone’s career accolades, that stand out and help me to recognise who this person was as a whole. Perhaps it sounds morbid, or strange, to collect the life stories of people I never knew but each helps me discover something about myself, and how I want to live my life. I also love that obituaries can help bring these people’s lives into my consciousness, if I was their family I think I’d be moved to learn that their legacy has made an impact on me: someone who never knew them and never will.

There’s Irene Wainwright-Snatt, who died aged 100, smiling in her floppy hat, who “never drove, but travelled widely by train, and explored nearly every continent.” She visited India, and Brazil, in her 90s. She reminds me that the world is always open, and travel is not just for gap years in our early life. Adventure has no age limit.

I’d love to have known Betty Farrar, she also died aged 100, the birthday card from the Queen greeted with “a wry grin and another roll-up.” She started “the most satisfying period of her life” in her 40s, when – after spending her early years as a “disgruntled Royal Air Force officer’s wife” she leaned into her feminism, and became a dedicated activist. Her house, “in the middle of nowhere” became a “magnet to people from various countries, of all ages, classes, gender and sexuality.” Her last message to one WhatsApp group ended with “never vote Tory.” She sounds like someone who was passionately herself, and reminds me to keep learning, as well as never give up hope when it comes to campaigning for a different world.

I’d long been an admirer of Dawn Foster’s work, the journalist who died aged 34, but reading her obituary it’s not her career accolades that stand out. Instead, it’s this line: “she had an incredible knack for cutting through the nonsense and talking about what mattered: people… I can see her clearly, sitting in a trade union owned pub, dressed to the nines with a killer manicure. She’s telling the wildest story you’ve ever heard and 10 or so devastatingly handsome Irishmen are laughing their heads off.” She inspires me to gobble up life, and people, and experiences, no matter what life serves me.

Then there’s my mum, Sue Innes who arrived at St Andrews University, in 1970 (after a spell spent in San Francisco, at the height of the hippy movement) a “fully-fledged revolutionary feminist, the kind that Britain at that time had barely seen, articulate, passionate and beautiful enough to become the subject of a famous series of dreamy posters by the St Andrews artist Jurek Putter.” Her gardens were “legendary, as were the beautiful plans and drawings she made in the process of creating them.” There’s talk of her work, as a journalist and writer, and how she died at a time of “rich personal and professional fulfilment” and “although the wonderful, gleeful laugh she always directed at the pomposities of the world is silent now, her spirit lives on, not only in [her family] who survive her but in the hearts and minds of an army of friends, and readers, whose lives she helped to re-imagine, and transform.”

Those last lines, and seeing how she was seen by others, reminds me to keep writing, and sharing stories, because that work has impact that reaches far beyond what any metric, or Instagram like, can show me.

My love of gleaning lessons from the lives of others is what drew me to Tips From Dead People, a TikTok account where Mary McGreevy, shares the stories and lessons we can learn from the dead.

I wanted to speak to her on why obituaries are so important, but what followed was even more than that, and led me to thinking about what marks people leave on the world, and how we can incorporate that knowledge into our own daily lives. It was a fascinating chat, and quite long, so I’m going to split it into two, with this first part focusing on hustle culture and how it defines us, often, even in our deaths…

How did you first become interested in obituaries?

My mom was the obituary writer for our local paper when I was growing up. One evening, when I was around 11, she had us go around the dinner table and say what the headline would be for our obituaries!

My mum said hers would be: never got her hair right, which I loved as it was just so her, so self-deprecating and it’s been in my head for a long time. Later in her life she became a memoir writer, so almost a personal historian, where rich people would pay her to write their biographies, so the idea of story has always been around.

I was a curious gossipy, bookish kid and what I loved about the obituaries was wondering what didn’t make it in. I just began to clip them out of the newspaper, until I had this huge stack of them. Then, a few years ago, after searching for a creative outlet during a stressful period in my life, my daughters suggested that I take this stack and share them on TikTok.

Why do you think obituaries are so important?

I wholeheartedly believe that everyone should have some kind of story told about them after they die. Maybe I don't have a global perspective on this, but I think they're important because of history and genealogy. Families should be recorded. Everybody, at a certain point in their life, becomes somewhat interested in their family lore, and I feel like we owe it to people to record those stories.

But it’s also my strong belief, and, of course I’m not a scientist, that I think you could find a link between the way your story is told and the quality of your death experience, and how people grieve you. If you know your story is going to be told [in a full, all-encompassing way] that brings a level of peace. And for the people left behind they can be something you can go back and read again and again. A lot of young people will say obituaries are not important to them, as their lives are so well documented on social media. But a lot of times social media is ephemeral. I think there's something special about a trusted, dedicated site, where you can have those stories. Four generations from now people aren't going to care about my life, but two generations, maybe one generation, for sure.

My mum’s obituary meant an awful lot to me, it’s something I revisit on her anniversary and I like to share it on social media so other people can get an understanding on how wonderful she was. I also recently wrote a feature [for Women’s Health, it can be found here] looking into the rise of AI-assisted technology that allows people to create a replica of themselves that can be visited after they died.

The evidence for whether this helps or hinders grieving is unclear (with arguments on both sides) one thing many experts agreed on was that leaving behind a legacy, or a mark on the world in some way, brings those dying great comfort…

Yet, one of the things that frustrates me when I read obituaries is how career-focused they are. Whereas the obituaries I have clipped out on my notice board contain touching details like “her house was filled with a mix of family, close friends and visitors, fuelled by chocolate cake and gin.” I wondered what you felt was missing from the obituaries that you see?

I say this in the TikToks over and over again: the little things are the big things. I don’t include people’s jobs very often in the videos, and I now have almost 70,000 people following me and I have never had anyone ask me to put their jobs in. I just don’t think it matters. We've seen so many examples of people who are well accomplished, but they are an asshole!

When someone doesn’t follow a straight career path, there’s often so much love and joy exuded in their story that you’re never going to find on a resume. But, there’s a possibility, that with all of this what I’m seeking is really just what I want to hear personally, as I’ve never found what I wanted to do with my life professionally. I come from a family of high achievers and their resumes are all awards, money and accolades so I find it hard to believe myself when I say it doesn’t matter if you were a lawyer, or a professor, you’ve [still] done interesting things… but I’m getting there, and that’s through these obituaries. I have the proof that says: this guy came out of prison and his life seems happier based on his obituary than this guy who was Mayor.

It's so ingrained in all of us to be impressed by career. But it’s not what stands out to me. I remember one about a woman who worked at the photo lab at Walgreens for 35 years, but in her apartment complex, she schooled all the men in poker and that's how she made her second income. Just at home playing poker all night!

We’re so entrenched in hustle culture and feeling like we need to work to make the mark on the world, even when we know, rationally, that the way you make your mark is on the people who surround you. I once wrote a piece collating all the tributes to women who had died at the hands of male violence, and one of the tributes I found was for a woman from her local taxi office, and it said: we knew she was troubled, but she was so kind and so friendly to all of us. I just love that so much because you get the picture of this woman and the mark that she makes even on people that don't know her intimately.

Somebody saw her for who she was. And they took the time to say it.

There’s so much more to our conversation that I want to share, and I’m always torn splitting these into two parts! But I know how overloaded our inboxes (and brains) are so I think splitting it is the best thing (particularly as my intro went on way longer than I meant it to!) I’ll publish the next piece on Friday, which goes into even more life lessons from obituaries including why it’s vital to share the bad parts of someone, as well as the good...

Please do let me know what you think, are there any obituaries that mean a lot to you? What would you want yours to say?