We’re in the final hours of the final day of 2020 and, personally speaking, midnight can’t come soon enough. While 2020 is a year most of us would soon rather forget, it’s one we will instead long remember – and history will record – as one of the most relentlessly challenging and deadly years in modern times.
While COVID-19 has left us exhausted and anxious, it is not the only reason we’ve said goodbye to loved ones this year. Accidents, illness, suicide, and age have also contributed to the emptiness many hearts feel at the turning of the calendar page.
In 2020, Now Habersham shared the obituaries of 635 souls. These local residents were our family, friends, and neighbors. They touched our lives and changed our local landscape forever. They worked with us, instructed us, served us, healed us, led us, inspired us, and cared for us. Some of them we all knew, others were only known to those closest to them; still, they all had an impact on this place we call home.
When I was younger, I thought it was morbid how my grandmother turned straight to the newspaper’s obituaries to find out who died. Now, I see people turn to our pages for the same reason. With age, I’ve come to understand this is less an act of morbid curiosity than it is a sincere desire to know how our community’s landscape has changed.
My grandmother, Bernice Sorrells Grant, was born and raised in Habersham County. She spent her whole life here except for a few years away early in her marriage and after my grandfather died. When MeMe, as we called her, looked at the obituaries, she wasn’t searching for gossip, she was searching for her roots, looking to find out who from her past was gone so she could know who was still left.
MeMe died in 1997, just shy of her 94th birthday. Her story is etched on our hearts and the yellowed, torn page of a local obituary.
Since launching six years ago, Now Habersham has shared 3,182 obituaries. That’s 3,182 stories of life, love, and loss, and I’ve read every single one of them.
Some obituaries are short and sad, pointing out there are no surviving family members and no plans for a funeral. Others are long and full of achievements and family members’ names. Others are just downright inspiring. A few have been intentionally funny, evoking laughter instead of tears. While each obituary is different and every story unique, one common thread binds them – the thread of community. How blessed all of us in Habersham County are that this spot on Earth we lay claim to has also played host to so many wonderfully talented, skilled, educated, adventurous, generous, compassionate, kind, loving spirits.
When I started Now Habersham, I vowed never to charge for obituaries. Why? Because I believe everyone deserves to have their story told. And if that opportunity only comes once at the end of one’s life, I want the world to know that they mattered.
So here’s to those we have loved and lost and to all that they brought to our lives. And to those now in mourning, may you find some comfort in knowing that your loved ones’ stories live on.
