When Charles Boehm sat down in his Houston home to write his father’s obituary, he was stumped.
“I’d never written an obituary before, so I decided to Google, ‘What do you put in an obituary?’” said Boehm. His father, Robert Adolph Boehm, died Oct. 6 at age 74 after falling and hitting his head in his Clarendon, Texas, apartment.
Boehm, 41, found the usual tips online about including a summary of the person’s life and a list of survivors. Then he stumbled upon an old obituary for Joe Heller of Centerbrook, Conn.
“Joe Heller made his last undignified and largely irreverent gesture on September 8, 2019, signing off on a life, in his words, ‘generally well-lived and with few regrets,” it began. “When the doctors confronted his daughters with the news last week that ‘your father is a very sick man,’ in unison they replied, ‘you have no idea.’”
The obituary then informed readers that Heller had left his family with a house full of junk, 300 pounds of birdseed and various dead houseplants.
“I read it, and I thought, ‘That sounds like something my dad would do,’” Boehm said. “He made a lot of obscene gestures.”
He then decided, why not make his father’s obituary as funny and unpredictable as he was in life?
Boehm said he broke into a grin as he began typing the first sentence:
“Robert Adolph Boehm, in accordance with his lifelong dedication to his own personal brand of decorum, muttered his last unintelligible and likely unnecessary curse on October 6, 2024, shortly before tripping backward over ‘some stupid … thing’ and hitting his head on the floor.”
It continues: “Robert was born in Winters, TX, to the late Walter Boehm and Betty Smith on May 6, 1950, after which God immediately and thankfully broke the mold and attempted to cover up the evidence.”
From there, he was on a roll.
He wrote about how his dad took up shooting in his later years and managed to blow not one, but two holes in the dashboard of his car. He said his dad had a penchant for fashion and was frequently seen about town wearing the latest trend in homemade leather moccasins, a wide collection of unconventional hats and boldly mismatched shirts and pants.
“We have all done our best to enjoy/weather Robert’s antics up to this point, but he is God’s problem now,” Boehm wrote at the end, advising everyone to wear whatever outdated or inappropriate clothing they liked to his dad’s farewell tour on Oct. 14 in Amarillo, Texas.
He then sent the obituary to Robertson Funeral Directors, the Clarendon mortuary that was handling his dad’s cremation.
Mortuary owner Chuck Robertson said he almost choked on his breakfast from laughing when he read it.
“I told people in the office, ‘Well, this is going to get us some attention,’” he said. “I’d never had a family come through the doors that wrote an obituary as classic as that one. It immediately puts a smile on your face.”
As soon as Robertson shared Robert Adolph Boehm’s obit on the mortuary webpage and on Facebook, people read it far and wide, he said, noting that it has now been viewed more than 1 million times.
“Clarendon is a town of 2,000 people,” he said. “I knew a lot of people would love it, but I was shocked when it really started to blow up.”
Strangers from around the country have left comments on Boehm’s obituary, Robertson said.
“I never met this man but sure am sorry our paths didn’t cross. If my family doesn’t love me enough to do an obituary like this I don’t want it,” wrote a commenter named Amber.
“Ohhh Robert!! You sound like the life of the party in more ways than one! I can only imagine the chaos in heaven now!!” someone from Virginia posted.
A woman named Nikki summed it up for many readers: “To the person that wrote this obituary, please write mine! RIP good sir!”
Boehm said his father would be delighted that his legacy has caused a stir.
“There are some people who might think it was irreverent and offensive, but I think it sounds about perfect,” Boehm said of the obituary. “To me, it pretty much describes my dad.”
Charles Boehm, the youngest of four children, said his father was an eccentric and upbeat man who had struggled in recent months since the death of his wife, Dianne Boehm, in February.
“When I tried to get him some mental health help, he admitted to me he was scared and wanted me there with him,” he said. “We all visited him when we could, and the good people of Clarendon looked in on him and helped him out a lot. But it was hard for him looking at my mom’s empty chair, and I’m 600 miles away.”
As Boehm packed up his father’s belongings after his death, he said he realized his dad’s spirit and character were much bigger than the sum of what he could haul away in a trailer.
He recalled being home-schooled by his father after he started having problems at school.
“I was always a tinkerer, and so was my dad,” he said. “He’d take me to junk stores to buy little gadgets so I could take them apart. And he’d get me lots of textbooks from the library.”
“He’d make sure I understood the material, and he set an expectation that I’d study until I could answer every question,” said Boehm, who received a general education diploma when he was 16.
Robert Boehm worked a lot of jobs and finally settled on becoming a truck driver, he said.
“For a while, my parents were team drivers, and for at least a year or two, I actually lived on the truck with them,” he said. “I got to see a lot of stuff, I read hundreds of books, and I learned how to sleep in a car anywhere in the Lower 48.”
One of his favorite memories happened about two years ago, Boehm said, when his dad accompanied him and his three sons on a camping trip.
“He was trying to make coffee in his tent at night using this homemade burner thing, and he started a small fire and burned a hole in the tent,” he said. “He cussed about that for the rest of the night.”
As he wrote the obituary, Boehm said he couldn’t resist adding that his dad’s apartment was full of historical weapons and a selection of harmonicas that he kept on hand so his dogs could howl along and entertain the neighbors at all hours.
He also wanted to thank the people of Clarendon for looking in on his father and putting up with his antics.
“I’d have to say if I want anything to come from all of this, it’s for people everywhere to support the mental health of people in little rural towns,” Boehm said. “They go there to retire, then when they’re old, their kids scatter and they end up alone. A lot of people slip through the cracks.”
“There are people all over the country like my dad,” he said. “We need to look after them.”
This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here
