ATLANTA — There’s no reason to believe Francie Mooney hasn’t got a lot more living to do.

And yet for the past year, she and her 87-year-old mother, Lucy Lynch, have been busy preparing for death, convinced that the best way to leave behind a coherent, meaningful and complete summary of their lives is to write it themselves.

In doing so, they are among a growing number of people across the globe who are penning their own obituaries.

Mooney, 62, of Riverdale, bought the “ObitKit: A Guide to Celebrating Life” shortly after her husband’s death in 2008 for herself and dozens of family members and friends.

“You drive through the cemetery and all you see on tombstones is the person’s name, their birthday and date they died,” Mooney said. “The ObitKit forces you to go beyond that and to be a bit more reflective.” Pre-written obits can be a way for people to spare family members from having “to burden themselves with making decisions when they’re heartbroken,” said Susan Soper, a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor who created the “ObitKit.” Soper said the “ObitKit” is really meant to be a parting gift to friends and family so they won’t have to make decisions at a time of sadness and sometimes shock.

“It’s the gift of peace of mind that they are carrying out your last wishes,” she said.

Lori Brown, an associate professor of sociology at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., said the trend is a fairly recent phenomenon.

“Rules or what we call norms about etiquette and appearing to be self-promoting probably prevented this in the past,” she said. “But the Internet and social media are all about self-promotion, and my guess is that this is connected to that trend.” Perhaps more important than anything is the desire to fill in the blank between the year someone was born and the day they died.

That is what inspired Soper to write the “ObitKit” and David McConkey of Canada to help her launch her website, obituaryguide.com.

McConkey said the site is a resource for people who recognize the importance of planning and want to write their own obit. More than 1 million people have visited the site since its launch five years ago.

“The rich and famous get obits written by professionals,” she said, “but most of us who need to write an obituary for a family member don’t know how.” Soper says when her grandmother died in 1983, she left a folder of instructions.

“It was just incredibly helpful,” she said, “but it didn’t dawn on me how much until my father died unexpectedly.” As she and her siblings tried to piece together his life, they discovered they had few details.

That was in 1996. In 2004, Soper began culling together the “ObitKit” and has sold some 4,000 copies since it was published in 2009. The workbook was recently featured on the AARP website and is available at obitkit.com.