I live across the street from a funeral home. Each day as I see the cars begin to line up and the people in dark clothes gather to say goodbye, I can’t help but wonder about the stories inside. Who were they coming to honor? What kind of life had just ended? So, most mornings, before I check my email or the hospital census, I read the obituaries.
As a child, I associated funerals with powdered donuts. While all the adults were busy grieving, we kids could sit in the reception area and enjoy the sweets. I learned early that sorrow and sweetness often arrive in the same box.
When I began reading obituaries, it started as a strange little habit; maybe a little bit morbid at first. But over time, it became something else: a grounding ritual, a way to honor the invisible threads between all of us. Each obituary is a small testament that every life, no matter how brief or quiet, tells a story about what mattered most.
As a pediatric palliative-care physician, I spend my professional life near the edges of stories. Reading the obituaries helps me stay connected to the whole of them. Many of my patients’ families send me the obituary after their child dies, and I always learn something that startles me with its beauty: a love of blueberries, a silly nickname, a quiet act of kindness I never knew about.
The practice of a final accounting
I first heard the phrase “final accounting” in the Maisie Dobbs novels. Maisie, a psychologist and investigator shaped by the losses of World War I, uses the term to describe the moment when a person must reckon honestly with their own story. They must face what has been done and left undone, and to find peace with it.
I loved that idea immediately. It offered language for something I had long felt but never named: the process I go through at the end of a patient’s life, when I pause to review, remember, and release. Historical fiction, in its own way, is another form of continuing education. It trains the imagination to stretch backward in time and see how human beings make meaning after great suffering. Reading Maisie Dobbs helped me see that reflection is not indulgent. It’s the work that allows us to go on.
Closing a case, closing a story
When a child under our care dies, there are always tasks to complete: phone calls, notes, prescriptions to cancel, and forms to file. The electronic record may be “closed,” but that does not mean the work is finished.
I usually take a quiet moment before moving on to the next case. I review what we did, what we could have done differently, and what we learned from that family. It’s not an audit; it’s an act of gratitude. This small ritual steadies me; it keeps the emotional clutter of unfinished stories from accumulating.
That, too, is a kind of final accounting. It’s how I make peace with the limits of medicine and with my own humanity.
What obituaries teach
At first I read them for the comfort of structure. A good obituary has a rhythm: the dates, the loved ones, the achievements, and the hobbies. But soon I noticed patterns that transcended the format. People rarely lead with career accomplishments. They lead with love. The details that appear most often are not the milestones of résumé life but of relational life: the jokes, the gardens, the recipes, and the pets.
One morning I read about a man described as “never missing a Little League game.” Another day, a woman who “brought cinnamon rolls to every church potluck for 40 years.” These are the quiet acts that ripple outward long after a person is gone.
In palliative care, we often talk about legacy projects: letters, recordings, and handprints. But the truest legacy may be the consistent kindness that no one thought to document until now.
A mirror for the living
Reading obituaries has changed the way I approach my days. When I find myself obsessing over inboxes or metrics, I ask a simple question: “Would this make the obit?”
It’s not a morbid test; it’s a values check. The answer often nudges me back toward calling a friend, lingering with my daughter, or simply stepping outside to watch the light change. In medicine, where productivity is idolized, the obituaries remind me that we are often rushing past the very things that actually endure. Listening, noticing, and laughter may be the more important measures of success.
Confronting mortality without fear
Research shows that people who reflect on mortality often become more compassionate, more generous, and more grateful. Psychologists call this “mortality salience,” the awareness of death that paradoxically deepens our engagement with life.
For clinicians, this awareness can be protective. Instead of numbing ourselves against loss, we can metabolize it. Each story becomes nourishment for empathy rather than fuel for burnout. The final accounting keeps the work from hardening into despair.
A daily discipline of meaning
My morning ritual has become as routine as coffee. I scan the headlines for a moment, then scroll to the obits. I read one carefully, noting what stands out. Sometimes it’s a turn of phrase, “he loved the sea,” sometimes a small triumph, and sometimes a hint of reconciliation.
Then I pause. What did this person love? Who did they impact? What mattered most to them? The exercise is quick but profound. It turns the day’s to-do list into something more intentional. It reminds me that every ordinary act is part of a larger story that will someday be told.
The gentle ledger of a life
The final accounting, whether in a novel, a patient chart, or the newspaper’s obituary page, is not really about death. It’s about balance between doing and being, between medicine and meaning.
When I finish reading, I often close my laptop and sit for a moment in silence. I think of the person whose life I’ve just glimpsed, the family who loved them, and the universal hope that our days add up to something coherent.
Then I get up and begin my own work again, reminded that every encounter, however brief, contributes to my own ledger. This record I will someday leave behind, written not in accomplishments but in the lives I’ve quietly touched. So if you ever feel burned out or unmoored, try skipping the headlines and reading one life story instead. It may help you start rewriting your own.
Emma Jones is a pediatric palliative care physician.
