When You Need to Bury a Failed Love

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(Soundbite of Funeral Dirge)

ALISON STEWART, host:

Okay, so a funeral dirge is not the kind of music usually associated with Valentine's Day. Or maybe it's the perfect sound…

RACHEL MARTIN, host:

Speak for yourself.

STEWART: …for a past relationship that has, well, expired. Log onto RelationshipObit.com, and you can write or read the obits for some seriously dead relationships. Let me give you an example. LC and MB, known for their not-so-subtle differences in age, religion, race, regional accents and net worth, died after drinking a toxic dose of sanity. They were two-and-a-half years old. It goes on to describe the birth of the relationship at an art auction. You get the idea. I think, Rachel, in some ways, I think it's pretty healthy that these people know this relationship is over, no longer…

MARTIN: Let it die.

STEWART: No more hookups with the ex, anything like that. And like many regional traditions, upon a death, sometimes there's a party to celebrate life and love, or at least look at bunch of other people who are going solo on Valentine's day.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: Kathleen Horan is a reporter for WNYC, right here in New York City, and the founder of RelationshipObit.com. Throwing a launch party tonight, right?

Ms. KATHLEEN HORAN (Reporter, WNYC; Founder, RelationshipObit.com): Yes, I am.

STEWART: And you - this wake for love, is it actually happening at a funeral home?

Ms. HORAN: I was going to have it a funeral home, but it turns out if it someone dies, you get put to the bottom of the list, so it's kind of hard to plan a party.

STEWART: Got you. And you had a little bit of a tough time finding, actually, a coffin for the party. That was one of the things you wanted to make sure that was there, so people got the vibe of what you're going after.

Ms. HORAN: It's hard to secure a coffin, but I…

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: Can you buy a coffin? You don't have to prove that you need a coffin, you can just get a coffin?

Ms. HORAN: Not buy, but rent or borrow…

STEWART: I understand.

Ms. HORAN: …barter.

STEWART: Now one of the reasons she was looking for a coffin, describe to people what happens when you first log on to your Web site.

Ms. HORAN: There's an illustration of a coffin with a broken heart in it. It sounds kind of silly, but it's symbolic.

STEWART: I understand. Now, there's actually a fairly sweet story for how you started this Web site, why you started Web site. Do you mind telling it?

Ms. HORAN: No. My long-term boyfriend and I of three years nearly, broke up, and then my dad died two weeks later. So there was a sort of cross-pollination of loss.

STEWART: Mm-hmm.

MARTIN: That's awful. And you thought the best thing to do is to vent your own frustrations and grief by bringing together other people who were also going through similar things, at least on the relationship score.

Ms. HORAN: I was writing my father's obituary, and I've always appreciated the form of an obituary. They're not pathetic. You just lay out the facts of a life.

MARTIN: Yeah.

Ms. HORAN: And I kept feeling like I should be writing one for my relationship, and the idea wouldn't go away. So finally I did, and I thought maybe other people would want to do the same thing…

MARTIN: Catharsis.

Ms. HORAN: Social experiment.

STEWART: So people who sign on to the Web site and decide to submit obituaries for the site, describe to me some of the questions that you ask.

Ms. HORAN: Cause of death, survivors, what each person will be remembered for, famous last words, things like that.

MARTIN: But that's nice. So it's not just this negative, this guy was a jerk.

Ms. HORAN: No, not at all.

MARTIN: It's like these are things we brought to the table together and shared and let's remember the good stuff, too.

Ms. HORAN: That's the thing about death, at least you get to memorialize it. And at least with that loss, you don't feel like a failure, like you do in relationships. So I thought the obituary form would be a good way to sort of memorialize it and then move on. And have some found in the mean time, too. I mean, I think there are some funny things about, you know, death and loss, too, you know. Some of my favorite obituaries are funny.

STEWART: Do you have one with you?

Ms. HORAN: I do. It's too long to read, but I'll read the beginning. So the cause of death was complications brought on by an In-and-Out burger.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. HORAN: J and V, a couple that died for a brief spell in March 2007 in Brooklyn, New York, expired for good in April 2007 in Phoenix, Arizona. J and V, who lived in Brooklyn, New York and enjoyed floating down the streets of Red Hook, romantic cheesesteak dinners, and calling each other wood mouse, survived for eight months. The ultimate death, due to complications brought on by an In-and-Out burger from North 27th Avenue in New Mexico, was announced 12 hours later by J, who, after a long and broody flight to Newark, New Jersey, during which V refused to play hangman or answer J's silly would-you-rather questions and told she was annoying him, arrived to a dispiriting conclusion that they suffered from a terminal case of a lack of good will. I won't go on.

STEWART: But you know what? Who hasn't been in that position where that one question sends you over the edge? It's the death nail…

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: …in the relationship.

Ms. HORAN: The person goes on to talk about how she ate his cereal, and he yelled at her for eating his cereal. And she said, if you loved me, you would want me to eat your whole kitchen.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: There's logic in there somewhere. Something else on the site which is fun, and we actually had a crowd gathered around. You have a video element. You, as a reporter for WNYC, used your reporting skills, went out to - it looked like Union Square was one of the areas, and you started talking to people about how they would memorialize a lost relationship, a dead relationship. Let's listen to this one woman's response.

Unidentified Woman: If there was, you know, in a park space, if there was a place, a public place where people could go have there burials for love, and you would see all these other people doing the same thing and you would just bring your closest friends, and you could weep and wail and bury any little things that you didn't really want to keep anyway, like gifts you hated or something, that, you know, maybe had sentimental value, but you didn't actually want to keep them.

STEWART: From your reporting, did you find out that - did people want to bury past relationships, or were they still holding on?

Ms. HORAN: Most people I talked to that - they were talking about their exes. Some of them already said they had, you know, some kind of, you know, ritual, or…

MARTIN: Yeah, ritual.

Ms. HORAN: …some kind of something that they did - you know, a lot of involves throwing out articles…

MARTIN: I was partial to flushing.

Ms. HORAN: Flushing?

MARTIN: Yeah. If somebody sent me something, rip, rip, rip, flush.

Ms. HORAN: Oh, yeah. I ripped. I ripped up stuff all the time.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: Some of us are rippers. Some of us are flushers.

Ms. HORAN: I also heard, someone told me that they put the name of their ex in their freezer. And something about freezing out that name, just, you know…

MARTIN: Or the fire. I had a friend put him in the fire.

Ms. HORAN: Fire - the elements, if you will.

MARTIN: The elements.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: So tell me what's planned for tonight. If you've got somebody listening, thinking, okay, this sounds like it's for me, this party, this wake for love.

Ms. HORAN: Well, I don't know if we have enough space for everyone to come to the party, but I'll tease them, anyways. So we'll have a drink called the break- up. I think it will taste too good to actually be like a break-up, but no one would want to drink the actual taste of a break-up. There will be a coffin with a wedding dress in it and veil, and some valentines that people will, you know, address to their exes. And there will be a DJ playing break-up songs. Should I go on?

STEWART: Do you think there'll be a hook-up tonight as a result of this? I mean, what are you - if you're a betting woman.

Ms. HORAN: I think loss does bring people together, Alison.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: Kathleen Horan is a reporter for WNYC and the founder of RelationshipObit.com, holding a launch party for the site tonight. Yes, there will be a member of the BPP staff in attendance, and they will likely have a video camera with them.

MARTIN: Mm-hmm.

STEWART: Which means will see some of the event tomorrow on our blog. Hey, thanks for coming in. Nice to see you.

Ms. HORAN: Thanks, guys.

MARTIN: Thanks, Kathleen.

MARTIN: And, hey, we did it. That's it for this hour of THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT from NPR News.

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