Yuen: St. Paul TikToker gets obit advice from dead people

When my husband's grandfather died at the age of 96, he had already had taken care of an essential matter of business: He had prewritten his obituary.

Maybe it was because he was private and particular, or maybe it was because he wanted to spare his family from one more thing to tackle in their grief and sorrow. His obituary followed the standard formula of listing where and when he was born, the names of his parents, his military service, his wedding date and survivors he left behind.

The obit said nothing of the fact that as a boy he migrated from Illinois to Minnesota while seated in the sidecar of his father's motorcycle, or that he and his wife opened the first self-service gas station in their northern Minnesota town.

It left out the part that she kept him awake while working long nights with a flyswatter to his face, that you could find them literally every evening for dinner at the bowling alley, and that he said "you betcha" without irony, and if he was truly blown away, "Well, I'll be damned."

For most of us, we'll leave it to others to summarize our existence when we pass, and they will be tempted to use the same obituary template my grandfather-in-law did. Mary McGreevy's advice? Don't.

"Throw away the templates," she said. "Everybody's scared around the point of death of doing something different or disrespectful, but it doesn't have to be cookie-cutter. It's just a tragedy that all these vibrant lives are reduced to a template."

McGreevy, of St. Paul, is a devotee of the art form. She's read thousands of obits over the years. The best ones she shares with her 23,000-plus followers on her TikTok account "Tips From Dead People." She offers not just tips on obituary writing, but joyful lessons on life and humanity gleaned from the final words written about the departed. A video producer by day, she's also one of the founders of Epilogg, a free online platform for obituaries.

Here's a snippet of my conversation with McGreevy.

How did reading obits become your hobby?

My mother was a journalist for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, and for a while she had the position of obituary writer. She later became a memoir writer, a personal historian for people in Sioux Falls. I got to be on that journey with her and see the value of people telling stories at the end of their lives. I don't know whether it's just that I'm a rubbernecker, a looky-loo, or a gossip, but I have always been interested in these stories.

In a TikTok video, you said, "Dead people know a thing or two." What do you mean?

What we think are the guideposts for "the good life" often aren't that at all. The little things in life turn out to be the big things. You might think it's about your job or your house or the awards that you won, but the things that stand out in obituaries are the relationships, the practical jokes, the trips, the quirks — anything that's small but amusing or insightful about the person.

How did obituaries become so dry?

It started when obituaries moved from a news piece to essentially a classified ad. Newspapers have served a great historical purpose for genealogists, for historians, for family legacies, in making sure the facts are right. But the upshot has been that if you're paying by the word or by the line, you are naturally going to have to limit your story. You need to choose commas and episodes to talk about because the business of death is overwhelming for people. It's led to this situation where if you look in the back of a lot of city newspapers and you didn't know better, you'd think everybody in that community was middle- or upper-class and white.

What's an example of a "little thing" that should be included in an obituary?

There's a woman named JJ from Atlanta who had an ongoing taste test of the different types of Coca-Cola. She loved Coca-Cola. Her kids, in the obituary, reported the results of her lifelong taste test of Coke. My mother-in-law's obituary had in there that she was more social than she was academic, and that she faked an asthma attack to get out of a chemistry final.

I did a TikTok video on this woman named Jane. I think it was the first or second line that her daughter wrote that Jane loved to tell jokes and stories, and while they most often fell flat, the fact that she thought she was funny was the most important thing of all.

Why TikTok?

I have three daughters, and when I was thinking about sharing some of this content, I asked them, "Does this seem like a good fit for Instagram, TikTok or something else?" And they were all like, "This is perfect for TikTok. Just throw in some fast videos. Don't worry about editing too much. Just put on a couple hashtags, and you're good to go."

I think TikTok is less polished and somewhat more authentic. I think it's actually not a bad metaphor for this end-of-life storytelling, which is to me, it's OK to be messy. I advocate for obituaries not necessarily being perfect, but really being more reflective of the little things in life.

McGreevy's top tips for writing an authentic and memorable obit

• Find inspiration. Instead of finding run-of-the-mill online templates to guide you, search for creative or viral obituaries, or check out the examples hand-picked by McGreevy at linktr.ee/tipsfromdeadpeople.
• Remember, you're not writing a resume. Rather, you are telling the story of why this person mattered.
• Don't forget the little things. What are the top three things that make this person unique in all the world? It might be helpful to think of their favorite song, hobby, skill or dessert. Those kind of memories might surface some interesting stories.
• Focus on the complete picture. The best obits are truthful depictions of a person's life — the remarkable, the controversial, the bittersweet — all of it. McGreevy has heard from families who say writing honestly about their loved one even helped them with their grieving process.