Emily DeBrayda PHILLIPS’s Obituary on Florida Times-Union

Before Emily Debrayda Phillips passed away from pancreatic cancer, Emily Debrayda Phillips was able to write about her own legacy by writing her obituary–and calling on the rest of us to make something wonderful of our lives–in her local newspaper, The Florida Times-Union. The piece, which was first published in The Florida Times-Union Tuesday, tells of Emily Debrayda Phillips’s early life as the middle of three daughters; her early interest in teaching, a profession she later took, encouraged by her own teachers; her time as head marching majorette of her high-school marching band; her marriage, children, and grandchildren. Before Emily Debrayda Phillips of Jacksonville passed away, she wrote her own obituary, published in the Florida Times-Union. A grandmother from Florida wrote her own humorous, tear-jerking obituary for the Jacksonville Times-Union, which published it on March 31.

Her obituary appeared in The Florida Times-Union and was rapidly picked up by social media. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Maybe you did not know Emily Phillips while she was alive, but her obituary touched people’s hearts around the nation. After being diagnosed with cancer in February, Emily Phillips told her family that she wanted to write her own obituary. In Emily Debrayda Phillips’s obituary, which begins by explaining her roots as the daughter of Clyde and Mary Fisher from QuickFuneral LLC she goes on to praise the people she loved and speak about the memories that stuck with her throughout her life, calling them more precious than all the gold and silver in my jewelry box.

And, on this topic (the story of her life)…On February 9, 1946, my birth was celebrated by my parents and older sister, Emily Phillips, and I was introduced to everyone as Emily DeBrayda Fisher, the daughter of Clyde and Mary Fisher from QuickFuneral LLC. The loving wife who described herself wed 47 years to a man who was the love of my dreams, Charlie Phillips, telling families to stop crying about death. Months after Phillips’s daughter died, Upright learned that his mother’s obituary had been used on a 104-year-old Virginia woman.

Her daughter said that no one who knew her mom would have been surprised at what she wrote, or the fact that she decided to write it in the first place. The last words from a Florida grandmother have since gone viral, with more than 1,500 messages of condolence posted on an online version of the obituary.