The obit desk.
by unfinishedthinking
When I was a young reporter for the Richmond News Leader, I often worked the obituary desk. That was different than reporting on the death of, say, a celebrity or a government official. Reporters needed to be unbiased and skeptical. Obit writers for a local, community, family newspaper were expected to be sympathetic and understanding. Unless you worked for The New York Times, you believed that every single person who passed on was beloved and accomplished and destined for sainthood.
I find myself in the obit business again. I wrote my own obit some months ago, to go in this space when I’m being skyrocketed into my own personal sainthood. I wrote about my mom a couple of weeks ago. And about Ella Kelley today. Enough. Wordsworth wrote that “the world is too much with us.” I disagree. Give me big bites of the world: it’s death that’s too much with us. In one of my first posts in this space, I wrote that cancer bores me, but that “dying is endlessly interesting.” I still believe that, but I could use a break here.
unfinishedthinking 
The passing of Mandela prompts me to nominate HIM for sainthood. But you, Mike, maybe you could be the patron saint of less pressing causes. Off the top of my head, I think you’d be a great patron saint of, say, the proper use of it’s-versus-its. I myself continue to take the lord’s name in vain every time I see that mistake make its way into print. But perhaps that is too small a cause. I’m pretty sure there’s an opening for patron saint of “Please let me win a $100,000 in next year’s Mercury Radio Awards.” (If you DO end up landing that gig, can you ask around to see why my half a million prayers were just, like, TOTALLY ignored?) Your many fans will probably suggest your beatification be instead for some high-falutin’ post, like “Patron Saint of Niceness” or something. Which is cool. Yeah, YOU take that one Mike. I probably won’t land the $100k Kelly gig, but when I come up to take the helm as, who knows, Patron Saint of Scratch-Off Lottery Tickets, the first cloud I’m gonna be stopping at is yours, dude, because you’re gonna be a real saint, mos def.
I always liked the e. e. Cummings line that goes something like this: Dying is fine, but death–oh baby I wouldn’t like death if death were good.