All that said, I don’t think it’s self-aggrandizing to say that obituary writing is important work. An obituary is, after all, the first last word on a life, a public assessment of a human being’s time on earth, a judgment on what deserves to be remembered. In addition, though we write for readers of all stripes, of course, and not especially for those in mourning, I suspect all of us who do this keep the loved ones in mind, and if we don’t seek their approval exactly — unsavory details are often unavoidable — we strive to write so that they at least recognize the person they’ve lost. Journalism isn’t supposed to be a personal service, but obituary writing, without compromising any professional integrity, can be. Maybe should be. In any case, getting it right is not easy. And getting it wrong can cause real distress to the already distressed.

Obituary writers tend to be older people, at least at The Times, where the average age of the reporters and editors on the obits desk is higher than that of any other department. This is as it should be. Partly, I guess, they don’t want us running around too much, approaching decrepitude as we are. But mostly it’s because we’ve shared a lot of time on earth with our subjects and have lived through much of the history they helped make. Not incidentally, we’ve all had the experience of grief and know what it feels like to live in the immediate aftermath of personal tragedy.

The significant irony to retiring from the obits department is this: I may be going but you’re not quite rid of me. My byline is likely to continue to appear for months, even years, because of the 40 or 50 obituaries I’ve written of people who are still living — the future dead, as we say, in mordant obit-speak. Perhaps I’ll even have a posthumous byline or two — not something I aspire to, by the way.

Advances are what we call these obituaries written in, well, advance. It’s a practical matter; you can’t write the comprehensive life story of a president or a pope or a movie star in an hour or even a day. But think about the presumption of such an enterprise. We know they’re going. We don’t know how. We don’t know when.

Which is, of course, the main reason I’m getting out while the getting is good.