Yesterday morning I was reading the Brevity blog, one of my favorite sites. Jeanne Bonner explains “The Obituary We All Need (To Write)” citing the one she wrote for her father. At 250 words it utterly failed to capture her father, the person he was, the parent, the complications of their relationship, her grief at his death. She felt she had to write more. She argues that many of us need to do this, to write the complete obituary with more thought, and that words pressing the bruise might be just what we need for our pain to begin healing. That a more complicated view might return the brightest moments we treasure.

I am skipping my original Exercise #4 because it is only about how to express the same idea several ways in an academic essay (especially the thesis), which was what I was teaching. We’ll skip ahead to something more interesting.

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