But my point, you see is that death is misunderstood. The loss of one's life is not the greatest loss. It is no loss at all. To others, perhaps, but not to oneself.
Obituaries were among my favorite to write because they have elements no other news stories have - a story from start to finish with a proper conclusion.
That's a paradox I've noticed, too: The news business held little romance for me, yet writing about it somehow stirred my affections.
When I left Toronto and entered journalism in the late 1990s, I had many notions about the news business, nearly all of them wrong, as it turned out.
Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.
During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise and great relief, they often wanted to talk - they wanted their recently deceased loved ones recorded in print.
