How Words Give Shape to Legacies

by Longreads August 11, 2026August 11, 2026

New York Times writer Sam Roberts on the art of the obituary

Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Tumblr
Mastodon

Home
About
Membership
FAQ
Submissions
Newsletters
Press
RSS Feed
Privacy Policy
Privacy Notice for CA Users
Opt-out preferences

Part of the

family

Sign up for free, and access all our Editor's Picks and original stories.

And if you want Longreads in your inbox, select the newsletters you want to receive:

Our privacy policy can be found here.

Success! Your account was created and you’re signed in.

Get Longreads in Your Inbox

Tuesdays and Thursdays, we'll send you our latest originals and all our editor's picks—and Fridays, go even deeper with our Top 5 of the Week.

Sign in or register

Enter the code sent to your email

Email address

Enter your password

Forgot password

Continue Set a password (optional)

Our privacy policy can be found here. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Verify your email

We'll send a verification code to %EMAIL%.

Gift this article

Link

Manage Cookie Consent

To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Functional Functional Always active

The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.

Preferences Preferences

The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.

Statistics Statistics

The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.

Marketing Marketing

The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.

Manage options
Manage services
Manage {vendor_count} vendors
Read more about these purposes

View preferences

{title}
{title}
{title}