At a time when actual news is officially derided as fake and fiction masquerading as fact travels at warp speed, truth is making surprising inroads in an unlikely place: the traditionally circumspect world of the obituary, where euphemisms such as “died unexpectedly” have long been the rule.

Now, an increasing number of families are choosing to combine candor with a call to arms in memorializing their loved ones, as The Washington Post reported in a story published Dec. 15 in the Valley News. Issues such as drugs, bullying, gun control and body image have all been addressed in recent years, according to the Post, including in the obituary of a 23-year-old Vermont man who shot himself a short time after walking into a gun shop and buying the lethal weapon. In his obituary, his parents appealed for enactment of a reasonable waiting period for firearms purchases to provide time for violent impulses to pass.

Some of these obituaries are painfully honest, such as the one for Madelyn Ellen “Maddie” Linsenmeir, a 30-year-old Burlington native who died in October after struggling for years with opioid addiction. Eloquently written by her sister, Kate O’Neill, it uncompromisingly detailed her long, losing battle with addiction in passages such as these: “It is impossible to capture such a person in an obituary and especially someone whose adult life was largely defined by drug addiction. To some, Maddie was just a junkie — when they saw her addiction, they stopped seeing her. And what a loss for them. Because Maddie was hilarious, and fearless, and resilient. … In a system that seems to have hardened itself against addicts and is failing them every day, she befriended and delighted cops, social workers, public defenders and doctors, who advocated for and believed in her ’til the end.”

The obituary did not stop at putting an indelible human face to the opioid crisis, which claims the lives of thousands of young Americans each year. It offered encouragement to others who are fighting the same fight that Linsenmeir lost. “Know that hundreds of thousands of families who have lost someone to this disease are praying and rooting for you,” it read. “Know that we believe with all our hearts that you can and will make it. It is never too late.” And it urged those who would sit in judgment of people battling addiction “to educate yourself about this disease, because that is what it is. It’s not a choice or a weakness.”

The obituary, first published in Seven Days and the Burlington Free Press, soon went viral on the internet and was picked up by the national news media, amplifying its impact exponentially. Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo was among those who responded. “Why did it take a grieving relative with a good literary sense to get people to pay attention for a moment and shed a tear when nearly a quarter of a million people have already died in the same way as Maddie as this epidemic grew?” he wrote.

The answer, perhaps, is that her obituary succeeded in doing what all honest journalism tries to do: portray in words and images human life in all its complexity, in order to promote understanding. And journalists know that it is only human nature to be moved more deeply by the specific story of an individual tragedy than by the abstract story of the collective tragedy of many.

Obviously, the courageous route that these families choose is not for everybody, for many good reasons. But those who can summon themselves to turn their grief to good purpose publicly not only do honor to their loved ones. By facing the facts without blinking, they also stand to find consolation in some ancient wisdom: “The truth shall make you free.”