A daily serving of life and death

Wednesday, 11 March 2026

Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. He is a regular contributor.

OPINION: The older one gets, the more one takes an interest in obituaries.

Some people, who have held high office or achieved renown, have their obituaries already written. They do not know it, but their lives have been encapsulated in a single page of prose. That one page shadows them in silence through their later years, until the moment when the pulse grows weak and fades to nothing, then up it pops, all ready-made, to slot them into their appointed place within the trophy cabinet of history.

Such obituaries are usually anonymous. Their authors work discreetly, for there’s a hint of the taboo in writing of the living as if dead. Indeed, I’ve read of one man who declined to write an obituary in advance, despite the offer of a good fat fee, because he was a friend of the subject and could not in good conscience do anything that might appear to urge on his demise.

Traditionally we don’t speak ill of the dead. This is partly out of a sense of fair play - they can’t exact revenge - and partly out of fear that they might. This superstition has given rise to a form of obituary code. Thus a man described as clubbable or vivacious, is one who might require a separate coffin for his liver. One who was of strong opinion, or who didn’t suffer fools gladly, is unlikely to be much mourned. And the flamboyant one is generally a lifelong bachelor.

The 2030s and beyond have been described as Boomergeddon, the time when my generation will start to fall in earnest, but death’s been sniping for some time already, picking off the stragglers and the outliers. Meanwhile, those of us still standing move towards the guns at the same unchanging pace, defenceless but for hope.

Of course, we are all strong enough to bear the misfortunes of our friends. But two obituaries in the last few days have startled me and given me pause. A school in Canada still sends me its alumni magazine though I stopped teaching there in 1985. Among the kids I taught was an endearing pair of identical twins, much given to grinning and gymnastics. Last time I saw them they were in their teens and turning somersaults, as full of life as it seemed possible to be. Now one of them has died. How must it be for his twin? How must it be to see one’s mirror image die?

And then, last Tuesday, in The Press, I turned the page and saw a photograph. “I know that face,” I said out loud. And I did.

It belonged to Tony Pigott, an English cricketer. In 1975 he and I played for the same county under-19 team at a tournament. He was new to the side and shy and I felt sorry for him and took him to the pub. He ordered, I remember, a light ale. He proved a good guy and a fine fast bowler. We won the week-long tournament. If I ever saw him again after that I don’t remember it, and now here he was staring out at me from a New Zealand newspaper.

I read that he had gone on to play cricket professionally, and in the early eighties had played a season in Wellington. This coincided with a tour of the English test team, and they were so beset with injuries that they called on Tony. Though he was due to get married that week, he postponed a beach wedding to play the only test match of his life. And now he was dead.

Fifty years, I said to myself, as I stared at the photo in the paper, half thrilled, half appalled. Fifty bloody years. And then I said the only thing that I could think of: RIP.