chan-holcombe

Why You Should Approve Your Obituary Before It Goes to Press

Lauri Apple · 10/20/11 08:12AM

Who was Chan Holcombe, and how was he circumcised? Holcombe's pithy obituary doesn't provide a full answer to the first question, for how could it? Holcombe, who died in Fort Smith, Arkansas last week at age 72, surely lived a full and rich life. He'd served with the Air Force and eventually started his own business. He "caught a lot of crappie" during fishing trips on which he surely contemplated the universe and his place in it—each time coming to a slightly different conclusion, as proof of his evolution as a man. And he raised a family, which surely inspired countless reflections and emotional responses both fleeting and fundamentally life-changing. All that life experience can't be conveyed in just a few hundred words.