Obituary Examples for a Wife

What is different about writing for a wife

Obituaries for women fail in one particular way: the whole life gets described in terms of the people she looked after. 'Devoted wife, mother and grandmother' is the most common opening line in American obituaries, and it tells a reader nothing, because it is equally true of millions of people. She had a job, or a degree she was proud of, or a business she ran out of the back room, or a choir, or a forty-year Wednesday breakfast with the same four women. Write that down before you write anything about devotion, and the devotion becomes obvious without being claimed.

Then there is the name. She may have had two or three across a lifetime, and the people looking for this obituary do not all know the same one. Her cousins and her high school class know the maiden name. Her colleagues know the married name. Her grandchildren know a nickname nobody else ever used. Print enough that all of them find her: 'Patricia Lorraine Gilhooley, born Vandenberg, known to everyone as Pat.' If she kept her own name, or hyphenated, or changed it twice, write it exactly the way she wrote it herself.

Most of the time it is the husband writing this, and men who have never had trouble writing anything tend to freeze here, or produce four flat sentences and stop. That is not a failure of feeling. Two things help: ask three different people for one detail each, her sister and her closest friend and one of the children, and let someone else type the first draft while you talk. You are also in the obituary, at the top of the survivors, in a sentence you will find strange to write. 'She is survived by her husband, Thomas.' No adjective needed. The word is doing the work.

One practical thing. In a great many families, the wife is the one who knows who to call: the birthdays, the addresses, the group texts, the second cousins. Now she is gone and that list went with her. The obituary is about to become the family’s phone tree, so send it to her church, her workplace, her book club, and whoever ran the group chat, and let it travel from there.

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.

Phrases you can borrow

These are the lines families reach for when the plain facts are down and the obituary still feels flat.

• “She is survived by her husband of thirty-four years, Thomas Vance.”

  The standard opening of the survivors list, and the line where you name yourself. Strange to write, entirely ordinary to read.

• “Born Rosalind Anne Petrakis in Harlow Creek, Texas.”

  Gets the maiden name in early without crowding the first line. Old classmates and anyone searching an address book from forty years ago will be looking for that name.

• “Sylvia Jean Marsh (née Halloran)”

  The formal alternative, standard in print notices. If she was married more than once, 'Marsh, formerly Halloran' is clearer than stacking names.

• “Devoted wife, mother and grandmother”

  Skip it. It is the most-used opening line in American obituaries and it describes almost everyone equally. Name one thing she actually did and the devotion speaks for itself.

• “She spent thirty-four years in labor and delivery and remembered a startling number of the babies.”

  Her work, given real scale. Use the same shape even when the work was unpaid: name it, then say how much of it there was.

• “She kept everyone’s birthdays in a spiral notebook and sent the card whether or not she had heard from you.”

  For the woman who held a family together in small administrative ways. This is the kind of detail people repeat to each other afterward.

• “She was the smartest person in most rooms and never mentioned it.”

  Good for a woman whose intelligence went into other people’s lives. Only use it if it is plainly true. It lands badly if it is a compliment rather than a fact.

• “She is survived by her wife of twelve years, Dana Reyes.”

  Same form, no adjustment needed. Use whichever word they used about each other: wife, spouse, partner.

• “After a long and courageous battle with cancer”

  Common, and worth avoiding. Plainer wording reads as more respectful: 'after two years of treatment', 'after a long illness', or nothing at all.

• “In place of flowers, please do something she would have talked you into.”

  A closing line for a woman with a strong personality. Better still if you make it specific: a donation, a long walk, the phone call she would have made.

What to watch for

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.

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