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We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
Are you familiar with Raspberry Ripple ice cream? It's a pale, bland, almost unflavoured frozen dairy dessert, cut through with narrow seams of deep red which savage the blandness.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
Like so many phrases in English, this one has two meanings. Conventionally, it asserts the view that this is the correct way to behave when someone dies.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
We ought to produce pale, bland, almost unflavoured sentiment. But it has a second meaning: many people assume that we will do exactly this. They suppose that we will do so. In fact, in [part of] my profession, that's literally what we are expected to do. After all, the word "eulogy" translates directly into modern English as "good words".
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
Here's the thing, though, it's just an expectation, it's not an obligation. You can cut through those pale, bland words with narrow seams of something fruitier, something more tart.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
Today I found out -- circuitously, accidentally -- that my Father died about a month ago.
Circuitously, because two-thirds of my life ago -- four ninths of his -- he fucked off out of our lives to do his own thing, and the only routes of communication since then have been circuitous.
And accidentally, because someone asked me whether my Mother had heard the news, unaware that I didn't already know.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
For decades I've been hoping that, when I came to hear this news, I would react with indifference. I've not only been hoping for this reaction, I've been studying for it, training for it, because it's everything that he has earnt, everything that he deserves, and everything that I'm willing to grant him.
But that pale, bland, almost unflavoured reaction gets cut through with dark, bloody, acidic, and unwelcome additional flavour.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
My Father taught me many great and valuable lessons, lessons he taught me without ever learning them himself, many of which are of the form "don't live your life like this". The latest and newest of these is "don't life your life in a way that means that when you die and your son hears the news, his indifference is savaged by his contempt for you."
We are supposed to speak good of the dead. But it's not compulsory.
Are you familiar with Raspberry Ripple ice cream? It's a pale, bland, almost unflavoured frozen dairy dessert, cut through with narrow seams of deep red which savage the blandness.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
Like so many phrases in English, this one has two meanings. Conventionally, it asserts the view that this is the correct way to behave when someone dies.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
We ought to produce pale, bland, almost unflavoured sentiment. But it has a second meaning: many people assume that we will do exactly this. They suppose that we will do so. In fact, in [part of] my profession, that's literally what we are expected to do. After all, the word "eulogy" translates directly into modern English as "good words".
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
Here's the thing, though, it's just an expectation, it's not an obligation. You can cut through those pale, bland words with narrow seams of something fruitier, something more tart.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
Today I found out -- circuitously, accidentally -- that my Father died about a month ago.
Circuitously, because two-thirds of my life ago -- four ninths of his -- he fucked off out of our lives to do his own thing, and the only routes of communication since then have been circuitous.
And accidentally, because someone asked me whether my Mother had heard the news, unaware that I didn't already know.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
For decades I've been hoping that, when I came to hear this news, I would react with indifference. I've not only been hoping for this reaction, I've been studying for it, training for it, because it's everything that he has earnt, everything that he deserves, and everything that I'm willing to grant him.
But that pale, bland, almost unflavoured reaction gets cut through with dark, bloody, acidic, and unwelcome additional flavour.
We are supposed to speak good of the dead.
My Father taught me many great and valuable lessons, lessons he taught me without ever learning them himself, many of which are of the form "don't live your life like this". The latest and newest of these is "don't life your life in a way that means that when you die and your son hears the news, his indifference is savaged by his contempt for you."
We are supposed to speak good of the dead. But it's not compulsory.
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