One day, awhile back, I saw one of my uncles get his newspaper from his porch. I noticed that the first thing he read was the obituaries section. I was curious and asked him. His answer "trying to see if any of my old friends passed away". Didn't give it much thought then but now I look back on it and have to contemplate and agree with his thought process. As you get older the chances of someone close to you dying greatly increase...and so do many of those that you saw on TV, film, sports...
@Victor I don't read print newspapers much any more, but I always used to read the obituaries. It was actually encouraging to me, in that I was amazed how many people lived to a very old age, and how much some of them accomplished after you would think they would be retired.
@AllenAtkinson Agree. Some of them obituaries were a biography of a person and quite telling...