The confessional obituary

This obituary, which appeared in my hometown newspaper on July 15, has been getting some national attention. Val Patterson, the man who wrote it, confessed to a theft of a safe from “The Motor View Drive Inn” (more accurately, it was called the Motor Vu Drive-In (theater), now long gone. Patterson also confesses why he was really not a Ph.D despite having the diploma: the university made a mistake, and Patterson didn't even know what the initials Ph.D stood for. Yet things worked out for him, anyway.

It's also a testament of love to his wife, and that's the part of the confession that moved me the most.

This should be preserved as a document, misspellings and all, of a life lived to its fullest, cut short by smoking. Val Patterson sounds like he was quite a guy, quite a character. If we all had to sit down right now and write an obituary for ourselves, what would we find to say?