Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude. –Anne Frank
I have been thinking about death a bit lately. That’s not unusual. I work as an archaeologist. The dead have a lot to do with how I pay my bills. The remnants of the dead I typically encounter are garbage dumps of some sort or another. So when I think about minimalism, being environmentally conscious and all the assorted pieces of my carbon footprint – well, it’s all tied together.
When the mantra is quality over quantity, it does make you consider time as an element in that. This essay struck me as being remarkably clear-eyed on the topic:
Recently, the parents of two friends have died. A.’s father died quickly of a heart attack. R.’s mother spent the last year of her life hospitalized. In one case, there has been a complete lack of public announcement. I’m left a little befuddled by this. On a practical level I can see the reasoning that newspapers are rarely read, obituary space must be purchased, etc. But there were no mentions through other media either. The death wasn’t mentioned for five months.
I want to respect the choice to mourn privately. But privately isn’t the same as denying others their grief. Our parents have lives beyond us. Before us, during us, after us. I can’t even count the people I have met in my life, or what impact I have had on theirs. As an insightful Facebook poster said, “Someone’s therapist knows everything about you.” The lack of a public announcement seems to suggest a indifference for community. And yes, we are a notoriously mobile generation and nation. But A., his mother, and the family have lived in the same place for 30+ years. B. lives several states from where his parents reside (his childhood home), but returns regularly. Geography doesn’t negate loss.
I’m not putting this on A. by the way. Their parents left behind a spouse. He is not an only child. There are extended family.
So many of the people I know were either raised without the rituals of religion, or have fallen away from them. That has left us without much guidance on grief. (Not that religion always had a monopoly. My background in anthropology could lead me to hours of writing on this.) Without a secular option to turn to, we’re left with manners, which don’t tell us much.
We should not be pushing into the family’s grief, we should be respectful.
But we can’t be respectful if we don’t know. We think it’s distasteful to post a death notice on Facebook? I keep getting a friend suggestion for a man who died last year. I have people on my “Friends” list who are dead. Facebook has developed a way to switch pages to “Memorialized”. I’m not saying that’s the way to go. But if a publicly traded company had to come up with a way to treat dead clients, it means there is a need.
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