Feedback: Death
Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 12:16 PM
Our segment with Anneli Rufus today provoked an avalanche of emails about the inappropriate emotions we sometimes experience around someone's death. Here's a sampling:
Subject: DeathWhen my brother died suddenly, my first thought was, "At least that's one funeral where he won't show up drunk." At my sister's funeral, he stood up and argued with the minister. Later he similarly disrupted other family funerals and weddings. All this while insisting on a myth of family togetherness. I was glad in a way to have that particular struggle over with.
-ABP
Subject: the farewell chronicles: comment
Just last week I attended the funeral of my 86 year old grandfather,
who died of cancer and in a sever stage of alzhiemers. this topic is very real for me right now. One thing that I found most difficult about the funeral was how to responds to the sympathy of others when I felt more relieved than anything else about the entire situation. i think it is ironic that as soon as the person passes away, that the death becomes more about the feelings of the people left behind than the person that died.
-CP
Subject: Re. Program on Death
From my experience, sometimes people hold back from talking to someone grieving about the person they've lost because they are afraid of the impact it can have on that person to bring up feelings of loss. Maybe they are afraid of their own feelings, But it's not necessarily out of insensitivity or indifference.
-FA
Subject: dying
when my mother died from cigarettes it was the end of my mourning, and i had let go of my disappointment and anger, accepting that she had chosen her own path. however much i don't endorse that, i also insist on being left alone to live my life as i choose. how can i do differently for another?
at her funeral i took some control. instead of letting the canned ceremony grind along meaningless for me, i chose to read a bit from Passages, and spoke about the need for my siblings and me to let go of whatever we didn't get from her, it's too late. instead, recognize and embrace the parts of her that are in us. it must be a part of the tribal life, so why not ours?
-AA
Subject: Death!
Orson Scott Card wrote a series of sci-fi novels known as the Ender Series. This was a book about a boy who was raised to destroy a whole race of alien species who attacked the human race.
He later realized that the species didn't know what they were doing. They couldn't communicate with us, and didn't really want to start a war. It was all a misunderstanding. He became a priest of a new religion that was popping up on Earth called the Speakers for the Dead. The speakers, as they are called, were people who would go around and "Speak the death" of someone. They would investigate the past and habits of the dead person and speak objectively about that person, reveal their secrets and get at the heart of who that person was without the subjectivity of being a son, daughter, husband, wife, brother or sister.
I hope that when I die, people will rise to the occasion to speak my death in this manner, and not hide the nastier parts of my humor simply because they deem it inappropriate, or impolite.
-CF
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