Obituary Examples for a Son
On this page
What is different about writing for a son
An obituary is built on the quiet assumption that the person writing it is younger than the person who died. Writing for a son turns the form inside out. The survivors list opens with people older than him. The line “preceded in death by” may have nothing to go in it, or it may hold his grandparents, which is the wrong order and every reader knows it. There is no way around that. There is only writing it.
If he was grown, a large part of his life happened where you could not see it. His work, his crew, the version of him who showed up at six in the morning to help somebody move. You will get a better obituary by texting three of the people who were around him and asking each for one sentence. They will send more than one sentence. Use the best line and keep the rest for the service.
The cause of death is the thing families argue about longest. With a younger man it is often an accident, an overdose, a suicide, or a death connected to his service, and the pressure to explain is real. You owe no one an explanation. Families do name overdose and suicide more openly than they once did, and that honesty has done good. Both choices are respectable. Make the decision once, together, and then hold it when someone questions it later.
One more thing worth knowing. For a younger man, the obituary is how most people find out. His shift at work, his high school class, the friend who has been meaning to call for a year. Write it knowing it is a notification as well as a tribute, and put the day, date, time and place of the service where nobody can miss them.
Complete examples
Every name, town and employer below is invented. Copy whichever is closest to your situation and change the details line by line. Most people have a first draft inside twenty minutes that way.
Short notice for a son of 24
97 words · paid newspaper notice
Devon Marcus Aliyev, 24, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, died on May 9, 2026, in a car accident on Highway 20.
Devon was born September 30, 2001 in Waterloo. He graduated from Cedar Falls High School in 2019, worked as a diesel mechanic at Prairie Line Freight, and spent every free weekend he had on the Cedar River.
He is survived by his parents, Marcus and Renata Aliyev; his brother, Sasha; and his grandmother, Lidia Aliyeva.
Visitation will be held Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m. at Kearns Family Funeral Home, with a service at 10:00 a.m. Friday.
Standard obituary for a son of 54, with a family of his own
233 words · funeral home website
Paul Gregory Hennessy, 54, of Bend, Oregon, died on February 11, 2026, of a heart attack.
Paul was born on August 3, 1971 in Klamath Falls, the oldest of Gene and Marilyn Hennessy’s three children. He was the kind of boy who took a lawn mower apart at ten and, more surprisingly, got it running again.
He graduated from Klamath Union High School in 1989 and spent two years at Oregon Tech before deciding he would rather be paid to do the work than to study it. He apprenticed as an electrician in 1992 and ran Hennessy Electric out of a shop on Greenwood Avenue for twenty-six years. He wired half the additions in his neighborhood and charged about half of what he should have.
Paul married Angela Duarte in 1997. They raised two children in the house on Ninth Street, went to the coast every October, and kept a standing Wednesday dinner with his parents for nearly thirty years.
He is survived by his wife, Angela; his children, Nathan and Cora; his parents, Gene and Marilyn Hennessy of Bend; his sisters, Diane Roth (Ken) and Katherine Hennessy; and four nieces and nephews.
A service will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 21, at Pilot Butte Community Chapel. The family will receive friends beforehand at 10:00. Memorial gifts may be made to the Central Oregon apprenticeship fund.
Full obituary for a son of 31, with the cause named plainly
361 words · funeral home page and memorial site
Isaiah Robert Ferrante, 31, of Youngstown, Ohio, died on June 14, 2026, of an accidental overdose.
We are saying that plainly because Isaiah would have. He spent the last years of his life telling the truth about his addiction to anyone who asked, and to a good many people who did not.
Isaiah was born on January 22, 1995 in Youngstown, the second son of Robert and Denise Ferrante. He was a loud, funny, exhausting, wonderful child. He played trumpet badly and with enormous confidence. He was once ejected from a high school basketball game for arguing a call that had gone in his favor.
He graduated from Boardman High School in 2013 and worked in kitchens for most of his twenties, the last three years as a line cook at Ravello on Market Street, where the staff considered him family and where he was, by the owner’s account, the fastest pair of hands they ever had.
Isaiah first went to treatment at twenty-three. He got sober, and he relapsed, and he got sober again. In 2024 he began speaking at the Tuesday evening meeting in a church basement on the east side, and he kept doing it during weeks when he was not doing well himself. There are people in this city who are alive because of things he said in that room.
He loved his nephews with an intensity that embarrassed everybody. He knew the words to every Motown song recorded before 1971. He called his mother on Sunday nights, and when the Sunday call stopped, she knew.
He is survived by his parents, Robert and Denise Ferrante of Youngstown; his brother, Nicholas Ferrante (Amy); his nephews, Leo and Dominic; his grandmother, Rose Marchetti; and the friends from Tuesday nights, who were his people. He was preceded in death by his grandfather, Salvatore Marchetti.
Visitation will be held Friday, June 26, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Kirila-Perry Funeral Home. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 27, at St. Bridget of the Valley Church.
In place of flowers, the family asks for donations to the Mahoning County recovery fund, or that you carry naloxone and learn how to use it.
Standard obituary for a son of 9
184 words · funeral home website and school newsletter
Theo James Blackwell, 9, of Asheville, North Carolina, died on March 22, 2026, in the children’s hospital, after eleven months of treatment for leukemia.
Theo was born on July 6, 2016. He was in the third grade at Haw Creek Elementary, where his class has kept his desk exactly as he left it.
He liked sharks, the number seven, and one specific brand of orange popsicle. He could name more deep-sea fish than his parents could pronounce. He was gentle with smaller kids and merciless at Uno.
He is survived by his parents, Jonathan and Priya Blackwell; his sister, Anaya, 12; his grandparents, Dennis and Louise Blackwell and Vikram and Sunita Rao; and a dog named Marbles, who is taking it hard.
A service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 28, at Blue Ridge Covenant Chapel. Children are welcome, and there will be somewhere for them to go if the service gets long. Please come as you are.
Donations may be made to the child life program at the children’s hospital, which gave Theo eleven months of things to look forward to.
Phrases you can borrow
These are the lines families reach for when the plain facts are down and the obituary still feels flat.
“Devon died on May 9, 2026, at the age of 24.”
The plainest possible opening. When nothing else is settled, this sentence is enough to start the draft with.
“He is survived by his parents, Robert and Denise Ferrante, and by his brother, Nicholas.”
The hardest line in the document. Write it early, get it down, and let it stand without any comment attached.
“He struggled with addiction for nine years and was honest about it.”
Names it without ceremony. Works when the family has agreed to be open, and it belongs among the ordinary details of his life rather than in the first line.
“He lost his long battle with…”
Worth skipping. War language turns an illness or an addiction into something he failed at, and nobody who loved him believes that.
“Taken from us far too soon.”
True, and so worn that readers slide right past it. “He was thirty-one” does the same work and lands harder.
“God gained another angel.”
A real comfort in some families and painful in others, especially where not everyone shares the faith. If it is your family’s language, keep it, and set one concrete detail beside it.
“He answered his phone every time, at any hour, for anyone.”
The kind of specific praise that sounds like an actual man instead of a eulogy. Look for the sentence only he earns.
“In place of flowers, the family asks that you check on the friend you have not heard from in a while.”
For a younger man whose friends will learn about this from the notice. It gives them something to do with what they are feeling.
“He would have hated this much fuss, so we are keeping it short.”
Honest and slightly funny, which some families need and others cannot bear yet. Read it aloud to one other person before you use it.
“…and the friends who were, in every way that counted, his family.”
For a son whose life ran wide. Closes a survivors list warmly without printing twenty names.
What to watch for
- Name his own family first, then yours · If he was married or had children, convention puts them at the head of the survivors and his parents second. Your name coming after theirs is not a demotion.
- Ask three of his friends for one sentence each · Text them tonight. You will learn something you did not know, and you will use at least one line of it.
- Decide about the cause once · Agree as a family, write the clause, and stop reopening it. Rewriting that one line for three days costs more than it ever settles.
- Get the military details right · Branch, years, and the unit the way he wrote it himself. The funeral home needs his DD-214 for honors in any case, and the dates are on it.
- Write one line his children can keep · If he left young kids, they will read this at twenty. A sentence about who their father was to them is worth more than a paragraph of job history.
- Leave the home address out · Give the funeral home or the church address only. A published notice tells the whole town exactly when a house will be empty.
- Say what to do instead of flowers · For a younger man, families often ask for something active: give blood, call a friend, carry naloxone, put money toward his team or his trade.
- You are allowed to do less than you think · Eighty words in the paper and a longer version on the funeral home page is a complete, normal job. Nobody is grading this.
The general rules on length, the order of survivors and what to leave out are on the main obituary examples page, and the step-by-step method is in how to write an obituary.
Other relationships
Common questions
Do we have to say how he died?
Who comes first in the list of survivors?
He was young. Is there enough to write about?
Should we mention that he struggled with addiction or mental illness?
Do we name his ex-wife or the mother of his children?
His friends want to add things. How do we handle that?
Keep reading
- How to Write an ObituaryA calm, six-step way to write an obituary when you don’t know where to start, with the exact information to gather and full examples.
- Obituary TemplatesSix fill-in-the-blank obituary templates: traditional, short, newspaper, celebration of life, military and faith. Free to use and copy.
- Short Obituary ExamplesShort obituary examples between 50 and 150 words, written to fit newspaper line limits without losing the person.
- Obituary FormatThe standard obituary format explained section by section, with the order newspapers and funeral homes expect and how long each part should be.