How to Write an Obituary for a Parent: Structure, Wording and Two Full Examples
Writing an obituary for a stranger is a formatting problem. Writing one for your mother or father is not.
You know too much. You know which stories are the good ones and why half of them can't go in. You know that the paragraph listing survivors is going to be read closely by people who will notice exactly who was named and in what order. And you are writing it in the four or five days when you are least able to write anything.
This guide is about those specific difficulties. If you want the general mechanics — sections, length, where to submit — start with how to write an obituary and come back. What follows assumes you already know the shape and are stuck on the parts that are hard because it's your parent.
Start With the Facts Sheet, Not the First Sentence
The opening line is the hardest sentence in the piece and the worst place to begin. Write it last.
Begin instead with a plain list, in a notes app, of things that have a right answer:
- Full legal name, including maiden name, and the name everyone actually called them
- Date and place of birth; date and place of death
- Parents' names
- Spouse or spouses, with marriage dates
- Children, their spouses, grandchildren, great-grandchildren
- Siblings, living and predeceased
- Schools, military service, jobs, the one they were known for
- Church, clubs, teams, volunteer work
- Service details: date, time, place, and whether it's public
- Donations: the organisation's exact name and how to give
Half of this you'll have to ask someone for, and asking takes a day. Getting the list out first means the waiting happens in parallel with the writing instead of after it.
One thing worth checking rather than remembering: middle names and maiden-name spellings. They get misremembered constantly, and the obituary is the version that ends up in genealogy databases twenty years from now.
The Survivors Paragraph Is the Political One
In most families this is the only paragraph anyone argues about.
The conventional order is spouse, then children with their spouses in parentheses, then grandchildren by number or name, then siblings, then nieces and nephews collectively. Predeceased family members get their own sentence, usually just before or after: He was preceded in death by his wife, Ruth, and his son, Daniel.
Where it gets difficult:
Divorce and remarriage. A former spouse is normally not listed as a survivor, but if they co-parented for decades and are at the funeral, leaving them out reads as a statement. A common solution is to name them in relation to the children — the children's mother, Susan Hale — which acknowledges them without claiming a marriage that had ended.
Stepchildren and stepparents. Either list them identically to biological children, or use "stepson/stepdaughter" consistently for all of them. What causes hurt is doing it unevenly — two children plain, one marked "step."
Estrangement. If a child hasn't spoken to your parent in fifteen years, they still go in the list. The obituary is a public record of who someone's family was, not a verdict on who behaved well. Omitting a living child is the single thing most likely to turn a funeral into a permanent rupture.
Partners who were never married. "His partner of twenty-two years, Michael Reyes" is now standard wording and needs no explanation.
If there is a real dispute, the tiebreaker that usually works: would your parent have wanted this person's name in the paper? That question settles most of them.
Cause of Death: You Decide How Much
There is no obligation to state a cause. "Died peacefully at home" and "died after a long illness" are complete sentences and nobody reads them as evasive.
Some families do want to be specific, and there are good reasons — naming a cancer, or dementia, or an overdose, can be the honest thing and sometimes the useful thing. If your parent died of something families often hide, and you want it said, say it plainly and briefly, then move on in the same paragraph. Obituaries that dwell on the illness end up being about the illness.
What you can't undo: once it's published on an aggregator site, it's indexed. Decide with the people closest to it before, not after.
The Two Paragraphs That Make It Sound Like Them
After the facts, most parent obituaries have a life summary and a character paragraph. The life summary is straightforward — born here, moved there, worked at this for thirty-one years, married, raised four children.
The character paragraph is where almost everyone writes something generic. She loved her family and never met a stranger. True of nearly everyone, which means it says nothing.
The fix is smaller than you think: replace one adjective with one concrete thing.
- Not "an avid gardener" — "she grew tomatoes she refused to share and gave away every zucchini she ever picked"
- Not "devoted to his community" — "he drove the same route for the food bank every Thursday for nineteen years"
- Not "loved music" — "he could name any Motown single from the first two bars, and did, every time"
One specific detail per paragraph is enough. Three or four turns it into a list and the effect flattens out again.
If you're stuck, text three people who knew them and ask: what's the first thing you think of? You will get one usable line out of three replies, which is all you need. Involving family in remembering has more on running that kind of collection without it becoming a project.
Writing About a Difficult Parent
Some parents were not kind. Writing a warm obituary for one feels like lying, and writing a cold one feels like a public settling of scores.
The usable middle is accuracy without evaluation. State what they did — the jobs, the years, the places, the people. Name what was genuinely good if anything was. Leave out the rest. A short, factual, correct obituary is a legitimate choice and reads as dignified rather than pointed. Nobody counts paragraphs.
What to avoid is the coded phrase — "he was a complicated man," "she lived life on her own terms." People who know, hear it; people who don't, wonder. Either say something or don't.
Two Complete Examples
A mother, medium length
Margaret Anne Doyle (née Kavanagh), 84, of Portland, Maine, died on March 2, 2026, at home, surrounded by her family.
Margaret was born on June 14, 1941, in Lewiston, the third of six children of Thomas and Eileen Kavanagh. She trained as a nurse at Mercy Hospital and worked in paediatrics for thirty-four years, most of them on night shifts she claimed to prefer. She married Robert Doyle in 1964; they were married fifty-one years until his death in 2015.
She was a fast, impatient cook and a slow, forgiving card player. She kept a list on the refrigerator of every grandchild's exam dates and phoned each of them the night before. She grew tomatoes she refused to share.
Margaret is survived by her daughters, Claire Doyle (Peter Nunes) and Susan Doyle; her son, Michael Doyle (Anna); eight grandchildren; her sisters, Eileen Barry and Rita Kavanagh; and many nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her husband, Robert, and her brothers, Thomas and James.
A funeral Mass will be held at St. Patrick's Church, Portland, on March 8 at 10:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Maine Children's Cancer Program.
A father, short
Alan Ray Whitfield, 71, died on February 19, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona, after a long illness.
Alan was born in Odessa, Texas, in 1954, served four years in the Air Force, and spent the rest of his working life as a diesel mechanic. He could diagnose an engine by sound from the far side of a parking lot and was never once wrong about it in front of his sons.
He is survived by his partner of twenty-two years, Michael Reyes; his sons, Dale Whitfield (Jenna) and Cory Whitfield; four grandchildren; and his sister, Brenda Cowan.
A gathering will be held at the family home on March 1. Donations in his memory may be made to the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System.
Both are under 250 words. Length is not what makes an obituary good.
Before You Submit It
- Read it aloud. Anything you stumble over, cut.
- Have one other family member check names, spellings and the survivors list — not the prose, the nouns.
- Confirm the service details against whoever is actually booking them.
- Check the donation organisation's legal name and giving link.
- Decide where it goes. Newspaper listings are charged by the line, which is why so many obituaries stop short of what the family wanted to say. Our comparison of where to post an obituary online covers the free and paid options and what each one costs.
The version you submit to a paper is the compressed one. The full version — the stories that didn't fit, the photographs, the things three cousins remembered afterwards — belongs somewhere it can keep growing. That's usually a memorial page rather than a newspaper column, and it's the version your family will actually return to.
FAQ
How long should an obituary for a parent be? Between 150 and 400 words for a newspaper, longer online where there is no per-line charge. Papers charge by the line, so ask for the rate before you write to length.
Who should write it? One person drafts, everyone else reviews. Obituaries written by committee take three times as long and read worse.
Is it acceptable to use "passed away" instead of "died"? Yes. Both are standard. Pick one and use it consistently through the piece.
Should we list grandchildren by name? By name if there are fewer than about eight; by number above that. "Survived by fourteen grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren" is normal and nobody takes offence.
What if we find a mistake after it's published? Newspapers will run a correction, usually free, if you call within a day or two. Online listings can be edited directly, which is one reason to put the full version somewhere you control.
GetMemorial helps families build beautiful, lasting online memorials in minutes — a permanent home for tributes, photos, and stories. Create an online memorial for them whenever you are ready.
