> Man, the one line that just sucker punched me when I read it was the one about the Marine surprising his wife with the candy and teddy bear. It's just got naïve childlike love written all over it-there's no great romance or suave moves being put on here-it's just a man barely past childhood who is so excited about the girl he loves that he buys her a teddy bear and candy just to make her feel special. The whole obituary read like an inspirational feel-good success story, in fact-the guy works through high school to support his brother with Down's syndrome, then he joins the Marines to pay for college. He proposes to his sweetheart and marries her over Valentine's. Aside from the fact that you know he's going to die at 19 ripped to pieces by shrapnel, it really does sound like the sort of All-American success story that we all love-he gets the girl, he'll go through college, get a nice job, big house, 2.5 children and a white picket fence. He was on the fast track towards realizing the American dream before he decided to sacrifice that to save the lives of his buddies inside the barracks.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

>
> It sort of makes you wonder if the American dream is really something worth striving for, after all. I mean, the cake pan maker served in the navy during world war 2. He married the girl he loved and they spent the rest of his life together. The funny thing is, though, that the only real mention his wife gets in the obituary is that she wrote a book of 300 cake recipes that could be used with his pan in order to drum up sales. There's no acts of spontaneous love or even mention of them spending time together. They just poured their lives into this cake pan because it was selling massive amounts and making them lots of money, which they could use to buy stuff, which they could use to achieve happiness.

Seems to me you're reading a lot into a short obituary. How do you know they "poured their lives into this cake pan"? How do you they didn't love each other? All you know of this man is what the writer of the obits chose to say about him.