Kerry Lou Ketchum King, 59, lifts her middle finger to cancer

Kerry Lou Ketchum King, aka Mama Bear, Ms. King, Mom, Big Blonde Tiger, Helga, and Speak No Evil, shuffled off this mortal coil June 17 at 4:20 a.m. in her sleep. One can only assume late-night TV literally bored her to death.

Bernard "Bunny" Hartung, drove a "one-way taxi"

A common "Bunny" greeting was "Hey, you bring that 5 bucks you owe me!??" Bunny's colorful expressions and ability to spin a yarn were second to none. You were never quite sure what was true, but it didn't really matter. His stories could go on all day and he was always ready to share his opinion, whether you wanted it or not.

An interesting blog post by Susan Champlin

Yes, there’s always a ribbon of sadness that winds through cemeteries like a low-lying mist. But I’ve never found them creepy or frightening or dreary or morbid. The opposite: They’re like libraries of lives, the headstones compressed autobiographies, condensed as for Twitter.

Such a good idea! A death doula

The woman sitting opposite me in an Edinburgh cafe is called Rebecca Green. She is in her early 40s, with a soft Birmingham accent and a gentle, smiling face. She is a nurse. But she also does something else – something that has prompted both fascination and animosity in those she has told about it. She is a death doula.

Frederic Hill, 102, rode the rails in Depression-era America

Ida and Fred were married in 1938 and lived at the Chase Hill farm, where their son, Brian, and daughter, Kathleen, were born. Fred then built the first of our two houses in North Stonington where daughter, Barbara, and son, Paul, grew up. There was a sauna in the basement. He usually heated it up every weekend and friends and neighbors would come over to participate, as was the tradition in Finland. Dad liked a hot sauna and he would roar like a bear when he was done.

Stig Kernell, 92, writes short, sweet obit

A Swedish man elected to keep the news of his death short and sweet, instructing a funeral agency to publish an obituary containing only the words 'I am dead', grabbing national headlines in the process. (H/T to Tanya Irwin

The NYT's Margalit Fox on writing obituaries

That, in essence, is the deep, sometimes bittersweet pleasure of the job – the chance to see, through the lens of personal history, how the world, for better or worse, got to be the way it is.