“I made a joke,” said Brandon Moxam, “Say the cause of death was an ‘uppercut from Batman.’”

The man said Merrill’s family loved the idea and his father agreed, “Yeah, the cause of death was an uppercut from Batman.”

The piece found itself in the Sunday edition of a local paper called The Ledger on February 15th.

“It’s so great that they honored his family’s wishes,” his fiancée said. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to come across his obit and be sad.”

Merrill's family says they will have peace in knowning that Stephen's memory is be preserved in a humorous way.