Mirror: https://archive.is/OpFMP

I read a good chunk thinking this was a case of the telegram in The Master and Margarita:

"Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three pm come".

She sounds like a wonderful person.

Funny enough, I died in 2015. Well, I thought I was clever, I added a sort of obituary on my blog's RSS to publish only if I don't write for a whole year. In php I used strtotime(+1 year) , but for testing I tried +1 minute. I forgot to adjust and deployed. So in 2015, the top post on my RSS was that I was probably dead and someone should check on me.

ALS is such a cruel disease. Cognitive recognition of a one way trip where all your functions shut down one by one. Highly recommend the book "I Remember Running" by Darcy Wakefield, which she wrote one finger tap at a time on her phone.

Cool way to write up an obit, sounds like the world lost a good one.

My goal for the day, is to be a B+ husband. Liked that.

I loved every word of this post. But do keep in mind that flowers do make many people as happy as scratch off tickets.

Sorry to be dense, but can someone explain why this is on the front page? Obvs sad for this person, seems like she had a fun time, but that's true of millions of people. Take this as "Help me see what I'm obviously not seeing", not a complaint.

I feel bad for her family, they lost a wonderful person.

I lost my wife earlier this year. She died unexpectedly in her sleep. I wish so badly I had something like this from her. Knowing that she considered her life well lived would mean the world to me. But of course that’s not possible, or highly unlikely, when someone dies suddenly. I guess that’s the trade off for not having to see her slowly waste away from a degenerative disease, for not having all my recent memories of her set in a hospital.

But fuck, I wish I had that. This was so nice to read, and must be a great comfort to her family in the midst of devastation.

> A celebration of life will be held at The Verve Hotel, 1360 Worcester St. Natick, on Monday, September 29, 2025 from 6:00 – 9:00 pm. Please join my family to celebrate my life, have a glass of wine…some tasty nibbles… and don’t forget to bring your dancing shoes and your favorite story to share about me and my shenanigans! This is a great location for out-of-town guests to stay in a hotel as well.

I'm glad that this works for some people but in the west we have this extremely odd prejudice towards real grief. I'm convinced that it isn't healthy and not acknowledging that someone dying is extremely sad for them and their family doesn't allow for real healing.

Aside:

In an era of generative texts and humanity pushing the bounds of what to do with them, how does one verify the authenticity of something like this? Does it matter?

~1500 people (US) die of this per year.

I wonder if she helped them write it or if it was done by her alone before it progressed far enough that she couldn't anymore, or if they just did it for her with advice from her family?

How did the obituary know the date of death? Did she have a surgery that she did not survive?

Presumably that also means there's no one to bring the server back up.

As someone with ALS and won't see next year, please do not post my memoriam page to HN.

Framingham is a Boston suburb. Boston is maybe a #4-5 tech hub in the US, so there are a fair number of Massachusetts folks on here for whom it'll be a local story. I've seen non-tech Boston area stories on the front page once in a while.

Also when I first saw the headline, I (incorrectly) assumed it was an auto-posted obituary and clicked to see the tech. I could see in this scary political climate, with US morality on the rise, and a few prominent new "DeathTech" startups, this audience might be curious about tech for EOL planning. Long time HNers (the ones who are more likely to vote on articles) are aging and that cohort are now in their 40s–50s and increasingly aware of their mortality as they themselves, family and friends confront challenging medical issues.

A perfectly fair question, and predictably but unfortunately down voted.

I think it's of interest because (1) it implicitly presents a question of how to go about a premeditated end-of-life message to be shared in an online space.

And (2) relative to typical prose in this context, it's a bit cheeky, more like an "aw, shucks" than a grand tragedy. Something about it reached across the veil of impersonality, again in a digital space. And to me at least it's raising a question of how you choose to express yourself and how that choice gives you life in the ability to be regarded and known by others, and perhaps an even more general question of how we're all already doing something like that on a day to day basis. I don't think anyone who voted on it said any of that stuff out loud but you could feel those themes as implicitly present even if it's hard to put your finger on exactly what they are.

To your point I don't think it's the only message that has questions like those behind it, but I don't think it's ever been teed up for community discussion quite like this.

I don't understand what it is doing here either.

The same reason some political posts end up in HN. Nothing to do with tech, nor startups, nor anything related to them. This page is just a curated American news outlet, with a decent comment section.

Edit: I'll obviously get downvoted for this, but that's my point of view. I'm from Europe.

I think this is true when someone dies young or unexpectedly. After a long illness though, the family has likely already done a lot of grieving, and may even be feeling something more like relief than grief.

I know my dad felt that when his father passed. I did too, but not as much as he did, because my dad was taking his dad to doctor's appointments and caring for him after surgery and generally seeing him in very vulnerable circumstances.

I just don't at all think that this is equivalent to not acknowledging that someone is dying.

I dunno. I guess if I ever die I would love to have people party / celebrate / etc rather than all be sad, but it all depends on the person.

Last year I was invited to a "living wake". The person was still alive and looked better than some of his friends. It was basically a party. But he had advanced brain cancer and did pass a few months later. The idea of such an event was and still is highly strange to me.

You can grieve before someone finally passes. My grandma lived well into her eighties. Her final two years were not great but we did what we could to make it better for her. When she passed it felt like a good part of feeling for her hardship has already passed, together with the relief of knowing that she is no longer suffering.

Grieving is important. To do it properly be close to those who need it. Dying is a process and not a moment. Be there for those that need it and give yourself room to do it properly as well.

Yep, this isn't great. Grieving people aren't in a "let's party" mood. It comes off as tone-deaf.

This just stinks of "don't ever show real emotion" US 'tough guy-ism' as it sometimes translates via women. I remember being pressured to be either fun/funny or kind/nurturing. Actual real expression, expression of sadness, depression, etc was always something I was discouraged to do or even punished for. I remember feeling weird when I went to therapy. Like "Oh wait, I can just...talk about my real emotions?"

I had a "jokey gal" persona for a long time, so maybe this hits closer to home for me, and it was a reflection of my social anxiety and unwillingness and lack of support in life to ever be vulnerable. So when I see the "jokester" persona, I always pause because it often comes from a bad place. I could even see myself doing this when I was younger. Today, I would never because the younger woman I was no longer exists and she would have done this out of fear and suffering and denial of self, not "fun."

There's a certain immature, 'won't touch one's emotions' 'Michael Scott-ism' here that's off-putting. A sort of "Fun gal in the office" energy that betrays immaturity and even insecurity. The desire to be popular and have high-social capital extends even to death it seems.

I lost a parent a while ago. I would not have appreciated a "jokey" display at all. It was the saddest day of my life and even today I still mourn. I'll never get over it.

And a sort of productivity culture-esque, "haha we had our fun, now go back to work/school," or whatever. In reality, a lot of people need time to grieve. I wish I took off more work than the 1 day bereavement I got from work and the 1 pto day I had. I was a high-key mess for at least a couple weeks, and a low-key mess for months. I would find myself crying randomly. I would have these sudden intrusive thoughts like "What does it matter, we just die in the end." It took a while to get where I am today where I have optimism about life and where I see my parent as gone forever, and without feeling pain about it.

As for cultures that have celebratory funerals, well, this isn't one of those cultures, so its not normal to expect people to conform to that. And even in those cultures there's a different more somber ceremony attached to the celebration.

That being said, maybe this was her coping mechanism, and it got her this far. Great. That worked for her. But for the grieving people, maybe "jokey gal" persona isn't the best. shrug, its not a big deal, but this being posted here as some kind of amazing and exceptional thing isn't great either. This has problems worth mentioning. I think we all think we can just 'fix things' or 'cheat the suffering of death' by being creative or different, but the human brain remains as-is. It wants to grieve and often there's no getting out of that. Loss is painful and can't just be turned into fun by will alone. I think in most cultures this would be off-putting if not offensive. On the other hand, we have to respect how people wanted to be remembered.

That being said, the stages of grief book helped me. It validated my pain and showed me a path. I hope her friends and family find what works for them. Maybe "Michael Scott-isms" worked for her, that's fine, but it definitely is not going to work for everyone. So just a reminder, there are many ways to grief, and some will do it via comedy, but its also okay to go down a traditional route or even get into therapy over it. Its also okay to cry today and laugh tomorrow and vice-versa. Sometimes I think of my parent and just chuckle at a memory. Life can be complex this way.

She seemed fun and nice. I hope the above isn't too critical, but its more for us still living. I hope she is now resting in peace. Or, as I am a Buddhist, that her karma was found a fortunate rebirth.