Last laugh: Marine vet fires off jokes from the grave with own obituary

Eighty-year-old Walter George Bruhl Jr. of Delaware may have been a known prankster in life — but even in death, he had the last laugh.

Mr. Bruhl penned his own obituary — an epic essay, really — that took gentle shots at those who knew him best, mocking to the point that even Reddit visitors who read his account from afar felt as if his death left a void. As one on the Internet site posted: “Great obituaries are ones when after you read it, even if you didn’t know the person, you felt a pang of loss,” The Daily Mail reported.

A sampling of his obituary: “Walt was preceded in death by his tonsils and adenoids in 1935, a spinal disc in 19745, a large piece of his thyroid gland in 1988 and his prostate on March 27th 2000,” he wrote. He also made fun of his wife’s love of fur by saying she will now be able “to purchases the mink coat which he had always refused her because he believed only minks should wear mink” — and then mocked his viewing.

“There will be no viewing since his wife refuses to honor his request to have him standing in the corner of the room with a glass of Jack Daniels in his hand so that he would appear natural to visitors,” he wrote in his obituary, as posted by The Daily Mail.

Mr. Bruhl, who was born in Pennsylvania and lived in Delaware, also asked those who knew him to honor his name by performing a random and “unexpected and unsolicited act of kindness for some poor unfortunate soul,” his obituary read.

He was a former Marine who served in the Korean War — and who “chose this [military] path because of Hollywood propaganda,” he penned. “Cremation will take place at the family’s convenience and his ashes will be kept in an urn until they get tired of having it around.”

His son took to social media to express his thoughts of the self-written obituary.

Sam Bruhl wrote, The Daily Mail reported: “Typical of my PopPop: He cut out the middleman and wrote his own damn obituary.”