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He googled “what do you put in an obituary” when his dad died and wrote one of the most beloved ones the internet has ever seen

“We have all done our best to enjoy/weather Robert’s antics up to this point, but he is God’s problem now.”

By

Adam Albright-Hanna

By

Upworthy Staff

obituary, Texas, viral, family, grief
Photo credit: CANVA – People smiling at a funeral celebrated a life

Charles Boehm had never written an obituary before. When his father Robert died in October 2024 after a fall in his Clarendon, Texas apartment, Charles sat down in his Houston home, completely stumped, and did what anyone would do.

He Googled it.

“I decided to Google, ‘What do you put in an obituary?’” he told The Washington Post. What came up changed everything. He found the obituary of a Connecticut man named Joe Heller, written with wit and irreverence and genuine love, and immediately thought: that sounds like something my dad would do.

So Charles did the same. What he wrote for Robert Adolph Boehm, 74, of Clarendon, Texas (population 2,000) went viral almost instantly when Robertson Funeral Directors shared it on Facebook. It has since been viewed more than a million times.

The viral obituary of a Texas man

It begins like this:

“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 mother****ing thing’ and hitting his head on the floor.”

It continues. Robert was born in Winters, Texas in 1950, “after which God immediately and thankfully broke the mold and attempted to cover up the evidence.” He managed to avoid the Vietnam draft by getting his wife Dianne pregnant three times between 1967 and 1972. His youngest son Charles arrived in 1983, the obituary notes, “with Robert possibly concerned about the brewing conflict in Grenada.”

His lack of military service was, the obituary observes, “probably for the best” — given that Robert later took up shooting as a hobby and managed to blow two holes in his own car’s dashboard on two separate occasions. His wife Dianne, “much accustomed to such happenings in his presence, may have actually been safer in the jungles of Vietnam the entire time.”

Good grief: Humor helps a family heal

There’s the fashion: homemade leather moccasins, a wide collection of unconventional hats, boldly mismatched shirts and pants. The career: he became “a semi-professional truck driver — not to be confused with a professional semi-truck driver.” The hobbies: historical weapons spanning from a 19,000 BC French atlatl to a Soviet-era Mosin-Nagant, plus a wide selection of harmonicas he kept on hand but rarely played. When Robert’s wife Dianne died in February 2024, Charles wrote that God had gotten her “the hell out of there for some well-earned peace and quiet.” In her absence, Robert had thrown himself into entertaining the people of Clarendon with what the obituary calls his “road show.”

It closes: “We have all done our best to enjoy/weather Robert’s antics up to this point, but he is God’s problem now.”

Attendees at the funeral were requested to wear “outlandish or mismatched outfits” in his honor.

The reaction said it all

Chuck Robertson, who owns the funeral home and received the obituary, told The Washington Post he almost choked on his breakfast laughing. “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.”

Charles said he was astonished by the response. “I was sad that my father was going to be forgotten and that my parents’ small life would get packed up into my trailer and that would be the end of it everywhere but inside my own mind,” he told TODAY. “That obituary was intended to ease my own pain and make a handful of people in a town of two thousand smile instead of frown, and it’s probably done that for 2 million at this point.”

The message behind the laughs

He also has a message for anyone reading: don’t let your parents slip through the cracks in small towns. “There are people all over the country like my dad,” he said. “They go there to retire, then when they’re old, their kids scatter and they end up alone.”

When the family cleaned out Robert’s apartment, they found four harmonicas immediately.

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    Quick-thinking gas station clerk stops kidnapping after victim mouths ‘help’

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    Tod Perry

    A gas station clerk in Detroit is being hailed a hero after he risked his life confronting a suspected kidnapper who came into his store. It all began at around 7:00 a.m. on Monday, April 13, in Hamtramck, Michigan, when a 16-year-old girl was approached by the suspect at a bus stop while waiting for her ride to school. The suspect pointed a gun at her and demanded she get in his car.

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    Abohatem put his life on the line to help the abducted girl

    Abohatem asked the girl to come around the counter and get behind him. He walked outside the bulletproof glass, told the suspect to leave the store, and followed him out just as the police rolled up to the gas station. “I see the police outside. I point to him—’That’s the guy,’” Abohatem recalled.

    The police were at the right place at the right time because they had been tracing the girl using her smartphone. After word spread of the abduction, a friend of the girl was able to track her location. 

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    “One of her friends opened the location through one of the social media apps. I said, ‘Oh, I could see her location right now,’” Mohammed Alsanai, the principal at the girl’s school, Frontier International Academy, told ABC News. “As we show the police the location, informed the dispatch, and as she walked in and said she had the location, like the whole room froze, and we all look at each other like, ‘Here we go.’”

    Amazing things can happen when people work together

    It’s incredible that the girl was saved just 30 minutes after being abducted by a group of quick-thinking people working together—although some of them didn’t know it). It was a great piece of teamwork from the girls’ friends, school administrators, the police, and a quick-thinking clerk who trusted his gut and took a big risk to do what was right. The suspect was armed, so he could have easily been shot for confronting the man.

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    “It is very concerning because we’re talking about a child’s life here,” Hamtramck Police Chief Hussein Farhat said during an April 13 press conference. “It’s scary to [the victim’s family]. It’s scary to every parent who has children. So, we can only imagine what’s going through their head right now. Just want to make sure they know we’re there for them.”

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    Photo credit: Canva – We learned a vital lesson about taking the first step.
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    For 10 years, social anxiety kept us from meeting our neighbors. One afternoon changed everything.

    Goodbye, comfort zone. Hello, community.

    Annie Reneau

    My 80-year-old mother lives in a neighborhood most people would envy. It’s not fancy or desirable in a material sense, but it is rich in a sense of community. Her neighbors share home-baked bread and extra veggies from their gardens. They pet-sit for one another and chit-chat about their kids and grandkids. They borrow tools and shovel snow from one another’s sidewalks. It’s a beautiful thing.

    My family’s neighborhood, just a mile away, isn’t like that. We live on a busy street. We don’t even have sidewalk in front of our house. Several homes around us are rentals where college students stay for less than a year. In the decade we’ve been here, we’ve only met three neighbors total, one of whom has since moved away.

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    How do you meet your neighbors when there’s not a natural opening to do so? Photo credit: Canva

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    I’ve relied on “our block is just different” to explain away the contrast between my mom’s neighborhood and ours. But in reality, someone at some point took the initiative to create that community where she lives. There was no reason we couldn’t do the same with our neighbors.

    So, why hadn’t we done it? Social anxiety. Simple as that. We’d have to physically go up and knock on our neighbors’ doors to meet them, and no one in my family felt comfortable doing that. We love people as a whole and want our neighborhood to feel like a community. But we would rather do almost anything than randomly knock on a stranger’s door and introduce ourselves.

    So, we sat in that conflicted space for years, feeling silly about wanting to know our neighbors but avoiding taking action out of fear.

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    Inspired by friends who had visited their closest 15 neighbors when they moved to a new neighborhood, we decided it was time to kiss our comfort zone goodbye. We made an ambitious plan: Instead of starting small with just one neighbor, we’d spend one afternoon visiting the 10 houses we could see from our front porch. And instead of just introducing ourselves, we’d invite them all to a brunch at our house the following Saturday morning.

    We made flyers with the brunch details and talked about what to say. We decided we’d just lay out how we’d been feeling:

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    We prayed for courage, gathered our wits, and set out with flyers in hand.

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    Someone has to take the initiative to reach out first. Photo credit: Canva

    The Response

    No one was home at the first two houses. At the third, we met a man and his wife in the yard. As soon as we said, “We’re your neighbors,” and pointed out our house, their faces lit up. They were so happy and grateful we were reaching out. We had a lovely chat, and they said they’d try to make it to the brunch.

    Of the remaining seven houses, three had people at home. One was a young family with a preschooler and twin newborns. Next was an older man who said he and his wife had lived there for 15 years. The last was a young mom with a two-month-old baby.

    Again, as soon as we told them we were going around to meet the neighbors, their faces lit up with beautiful expressions of recognition. Yes, we’ve been wanting that, too. Yes, thank you for going out of your way to come by. Yes, we’ll try to make it. Yes, yes, yes.

    We left flyers on the doors of people who didn’t answer and returned home, exhausted from the effort but invigorated by the response.

    The What-ifs

    As the Saturday brunch approached, the anxious what-ifs kicked in. What if no one comes to the brunch? What if people do come and it’s just weird? What if we run out of food? What if we unwittingly just invited a bunch of psychos into our home?

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    Sharing a meal is a great way to start getting to know people. Photo credit: Canva

    The Result

    About 30 minutes before brunch time, our doorbell rang. It was the husband of the mom with the two-month-old, who wanted to thank us for the invite. They had hoped to make it but couldn’t, but he at least wanted to come by and introduce himself. He and my husband chatted for a few minutes. Before he left, they had already talked about swapping tools.

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    Photo credit: Red Carpet Report/Flickr & Wikimedia Commons – Sabrina Carpenter and The Beatles.
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    Watch a 10-year-old Sabrina Carpenter cover The Beatles “Come Together” for Miley Cyrus

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    Singer in hospice performs soulful ‘Landslide’ cover ‘one last time’

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    The final performance of singer Marirose Powell has people welling up all over TikTok because of the soulful way she sang “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac while in hospice care. Powell performed as Stevie Nicks in a Fleetwood Mac cover band for over twenty years, so the song was a major part of her life.

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    @samxenos

    there isnt a day that goes by that i wish we’d had more time with her. she was truly the only person i’ve ever known to leave people better than she found them. until we can be together again mama…

    ♬ original sound – samxenos

    In her obituary, she is remembered for her “infectious smile” that “guaranteed to brighten anyone’s day and she was known for her incredibly kind soul and generous heart. She had the beautiful ability to leave all those she touched better than she found them.”

    In addition to performing as Steve Nicks, Powell released 3 solo albums and worked as an ER nurse. As a lifelong musician, she would probably be more than pleased to learn that her final performance has touched many people.

    “I hope Stevie Nick sees this. She would be proud to know that your mom sung her songs for decades,and her choice of this song was heartfelt,” one commenter wrote. “I’m sobbing. God bless you and your family. Your mom is beautiful,” another added.

    “That might be the most touching performance of ‘Landslide’ to ever exist,” a commenter wrote.

    Xenos and her husband, Powell’s son, are overjoyed that the video has gone viral. At first, she was afraid of how her husband would react to the clip being posted on TikTok. “I remember calling my husband nervous because he didn’t know I posted it,” Xenos told Upworthy. “He was over the moon after reading the comments and seeing people feel her genuine soul from that small clip. He asked me to post more videos of her and they have generated a phenomenal response. She was the most giving and generous person. I would tell her to post her music and she was worried no one would care. I’m so honored to have proved her wrong on that fact.”

    Nicks says she wrote “Landslide” in Aspen, Colorado, at 27. “I did already feel old in a lot of ways,” Nicks told The New York Times. “I’d been working as a waitress and a cleaning lady for years. I was tired.”

    She was also having a hard time in her relationship with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. She composed the song while looking out her window in the snow-covered Aspen mountains. “And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills / Til the landslide brought me down.”

    Here is a full performance of “Landslide” that Powell gave in 2016 at the Prospect Theater in Modesto, California. Jamie Byous joins her on guitar. 

    This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

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    Indigenous woman cries tears of joy after hairdresser discovers ‘unruly’ grey hairs

    “What a sacred and healthy perspective.”

    Jacalyn Wetzel

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    indigenous, grey hair, getting older, culture and humanity, going grey
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    During the colonization of the Texas Gulf Coast where the Karankawa originated, the Indigenous tribe was nearly eliminated. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the Karankawa people fought to maintain their land from 1685 until 1858 from French and Spanish settlers. Due to this multi-century, on-and-off battle for their territory, the tribe’s numbers became so small that they were considered “extinct.”

    Enriquez is a descendant of the small number of Karankawa that survived. To her, living long enough to experience the growth of grey hair is a gift. The woman shares how much her “unruly” greys mean to her in a video uploaded to her Instagram page.

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    Indigenous woman standing in sunshine.
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    “I got my hair styled today. I don’t get it cut. It’s a cultural belief that I was taught by my mother. We don’t cut our hair, we let it grow. We save the cut for very, very serious and important moments in our lives,” she says while sitting in her car.

    The woman explains that while she was having her hair styled, she asked the hairdresser about the texture of her hair. This is when she learned of her wiry new strands. She surprised hairdresser with her delighted response. “She said to me that it was because I had many little greys, and the unruly ones that were pushing up my other hair that weren’t grey were causing it to be a little bit frizzy.”

    Enriquez lights up and smiles while recalling the moment in her hairdresser’s chair. She reveals, “And that felt so incredible. What an honor, and I was…I’ve only ever seen my head grow one grey hair, and even when I knew I had one grey hair, I was incredibly thankful. When she saw that I was smiling and so happy, she said, ‘Oh wow, you really must come from a different culture.’”

    indigenous, grey hair, getting older, culture and humanity, going grey
    Elderly indigenous woman.
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    She later adds while tearing up, “I’m very happy to report that not only do I have for sure one grey hair, I have many. A plethora of grey hair. What an honor. What a fantastic gift to be lucky enough to see myself grow grey hair. That is so incredible. I am so lucky. What a life it has been. What a life it continues to be.”

    Enriquez wipes away tears as she encourages others to embrace their grey hair. Viewers were moved by her joyfully emotional response to finding out she has a head full of grey hairs pushing their way through.

    One person shares, “As a chemo patient I am always surprised when people are upset about their grey hair. I have come to see it as a privilege and dream of the day I might have greys, though my mom’s hair has never changed colors, and neither did her dads. Their hair has always stayed brown for some reason. Since my hair has begun growing again I have decided not to cut it for as long as possible. So I can say, I’ve been cancer free for this long, and show people my hair for reference.”

    Someone else writes, “This had me in tears because i’ve loss so many people and im only 30 and the day i get grey hairs i will celebrate with them!”

    Another person says, “i’m so happy to hear this expression of delight regarding your grey hair~ i am only just now getting greys & my own natural reaction was very different from my mom’s & grammom’s reactions~ i was surprised to find that i like seeing them appear~ hearing your perspective makes me think that it’s because i am not as tethered to the usa culture as they…
    so thank you for sharing your experience & offering food for thought~ & congratulations.”

    “I have been allowing my greys to come in naturally and have stopped dyeing my hair and it’s very liberating and in a society where ageism is everywhere it feels like resistance. And I love that! I have more greys than my mom. :),” someone else shares.

    indigenous, grey hair, getting older, culture and humanity, going grey
    Elderly Indigenous woman with hair covered.
    Photo credit: Canva

    “What a sacred and healthy perspective,” one person says.

    Another reveals, “I love this so much! Thank you for sharing your joy and gratitude with us. I’m getting grey and have been oscillating between feeling happy about it and feeling like I’m not sure i feel “ready” to have grey hair.”

    Enriquez says, “I’ve always been of the personal belief that humans take the longest to change the color of their foliage in observation of their reconnection with Mother Earth and the cyclicity of her seasons and transitions.” She then explains that trees change with the seasons, grass goes through a cyclical change, and even animals turn grey and calm with age. “And it has always been representative that you have lived a full life. Do you know how many people didn’t get to grow grey hair? Didn’t get to see the hair change? What a gift,” she adds.

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  • A young girl tells Carol Burnett ‘hello’ from her neighbor. It happened to have been Carol’s biggest crush.
    Photo credit: Elmer Holloway, NBC, Wikimedia Commons – Comedian Carol Burnett in a 1958 TV sketch.
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    A young girl tells Carol Burnett ‘hello’ from her neighbor. It happened to have been Carol’s biggest crush.

    “That ‘Tommy’ was from the heart.”

    Cecily Knobler

    When a person consistently brings the world joy, it’s extra special when we see them experience it tenfold. This is what happened for iconic comedian Carol Burnett when a young girl relayed a message from her next-door neighbor. Burnett’s response was pure delight.

    A re-surfaced clip of Burnett shows her taking questions at the Q&A segment before her taping of The Carol Burnett Show. A young girl tells Burnett that she “lives next door” to one of her old boyfriends and that he says “Hello.” Burnett, clad in a lively black and yellow dress with a giant chiffon bowtie, confirms, “You live next door to an old boyfriend of mine and he says hello?” She throws her head back in jest. “There were so many!” The audience, as they so often did, laughs uproariously.

    Tommy Tracy?

    Burnett leans toward the girl and asks, “Who?” The firl answers quickly, “Tom Tracy.” Burnett, who had reportedly not planned the reaction, answers in earnest shock, crying, “TOMMY?! You’re kidding? Tommy Tracy?” Clearly, Burnett can hardly believe it. “She lives next door to… I can’t believe this! ” she stutters as she squats down. “How IS he?”

    The audience continues to eat up the exchange, while Burnett adds a vulnerably adorable tidbit to the story. “Did you know that I loved him from the time I was about 12 years old up till the time I was 17? Which was about ten years ago. I always loved Tommy Tracy. And I always dreamed that someday we’d get married and have two children and I’d name them Stacy Tracy and Dick Tracy.”

    An Instagram page shared the clip, noting a super fun fact: “The audience Q&A was one of the most beloved segments on The Carol Burnett Show, which ran on CBS from 1967 to 1978. Carol never knew what she’d be asked, so it was pure improv. The Q&A was done without any wigs, costumes, or character, just Carol herself, and if she ended up with egg on her face, so be it, which is exactly what made audiences connect with her so deeply.”

    Making sure he could find her

    The Instagram handle continued. “Carol has said she actually considered changing her name to Carol Creighton early in her career because she thought it sounded better, but she kept Burnett specifically because she wanted Tommy Tracy to know it was her if she ever became successful. He sent his regards via a little girl in a studio audience decades later.” (This anecdote has been confirmed!)

    The clip had over a quarter of a million likes in less than a week and many comments. Quite a few simply reveled in the brilliance and happiness Burnett brought (and brings) to a crowd. One noted how sincere her “Tommy” squeal was, writing, “That ‘Tommy’ was from the heart.”

    Many joked about Tommy himself. “Tom went to everyone he knew saying, ‘I told y’all I dated Carol Burnett!”

    Jerry Hall

    This wouldn’t have been the only time Burnett was shocked by a crush during Q&A. In 1976, a young girl showed up in the audience and asked, “Did you know Jerry Hall?” Burnett proudly proclaimed, “I had a crush on Jerry Hall!” The audience goes wild, exclaiming, “This is his daughter!”

    Burnett hilariously responds, “You’re Jerry Hall’s daughter? You could have been mine!” She then comes into the audience to give the young girl a giant hug.

    This clip has yielded well over half a million likes as well. One Instagrammer seemed to sum up what so many of us feel, writing, “Every time I see a clip from her show I can’t help but smile. She’s so infectious.”






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  • After his father rejected a circus’ offer to buy him for $5,000, 3-foot-tall man becomes a doctor
    Photo credit: via Sir Takhtasinhji General Hospital/Instagram – Sir Takhtasinhji General Hospital Bhavnagar and Dr. Ganesh Baraiya.
    , ,

    After his father rejected a circus’ offer to buy him for $5,000, 3-foot-tall man becomes a doctor

    He overcame everything to fulfill his dreams.

    Tod Perry

    The odds seemed stacked against Ganesh Baraiya at birth. He had seven brothers and sisters, was born with dwarfism, and has a locomotor disability that impairs his movement. His prospects in life were so limited that while he was in primary school, a circus offered his family 500,000 rupees ($5,350) to take him as a performer. Even though it was a life-changing amount of money, his father refused, in hopes that his son would pursue an education.

    His hard work in school paid off, and in 2018, Ganesh eventually passed India’s medical exam. However, instead of celebrating, Ganesh faced another barrier: the Medical Council of India rejected his admission to an MBBS program because of his physical disability.

    The council believed that his height could be a hindrance during medical emergencies. “I was very disappointed,” Ganesh told the BBC. “I could not see a way out… I was thinking that my dream of becoming a doctor would remain incomplete.”

    Ganesh was hurt, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer

    “When the MCI rejected my application, I was very disappointed. But I didn’t give up,” he told The Federal. “I approached my college principal, Dr. Dalpatghai Katariya, who encouraged me to fight for my right to pursue medicine.” With the help of his friend, he fought the rejection in India’s high court, but his plea was rejected.

    Undeterred, Ganesh appealed the decision, and the case reached India’s Supreme Court. “After four months, the Supreme Court of India ruled in my favor on October 22, 2018,” he told The Federal. “After completing my MBBS and internship, I began my first posting as a medical officer on November 27, 2025. It’s a moment I’ve worked hard for.” Ganesh now works as a medical officer at Bhavnagar Civil Hospital, the same place where he received his medical degree.

    Ganesh’s story is an inspiration for us all 

    While some may believe that being only three feet tall and weighing a little over 40 pounds might pose serious drawbacks as a medical practitioner, Ganesh says his stature offers unique benefits. “Children would open up to me easily,” he told the BBC. “They would tell me their small problems, which they would not share with other doctors.”

    Looking ahead, Ganesh wants to pursue a career that leverages his strengths, including radiology, pediatrics, and dermatology. Now that he has a steady income, he’d also like to build a brick house for his family. 

    Ganesh’s story is a powerful example of what can happen when you refuse to settle, whether that’s joining a circus or giving up when powerful institutions say you can’t pursue your dreams. He’s also a great inspiration for anyone who has had to pick themselves up from a major setback. If a three-foot-tall man born into a humble farming family can fulfill his dreams, then anything is possible.

    “A life without struggle is like not living at all,” he told the BBC. “Many times in life, I feel like I am failing. But you have to keep moving ahead toward your goals.”

    Keep Reading →
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