Dear Humans

One of the owners of the company I work for, had a younger brother die today. We, as a society, do not know how to handle this. I watched the flood of thoughts and prayers wash through the text chain and it broke my heart. We really do not know what to say anymore except for the same old tired and cliché sentiments that I’ve heard offered all my life. I know people mean well but I think at this point these words are devoid of meaning. It is the equivalent of forcing children to high five and say good game to their opponents after a game. High five/good game, high five/good game, high five/good game. Hug/sorry for your loss, hug/sorry for your loss, hug/sorry for your loss.  Then comes the typical white southern funeral which will be a combination of:

·         Song

·         Prayer

·         Tell attendees to change if they don’t want to burn in hell

·         Song

·         Read their obituary

·         Maybe say a few PC things about them

·         Song

·         Prayer

·         Hug/sorry for your loss while music plays until we shut the family off alone with their loved one, one last time.

 

This really took me down quick, thinking that I might be the recipient of this news one day and all I could think about is how I would want to tell you all the wonderful things about my siblings. I cannot stop crying. I hope one day we will be able to overturn all the accepted conventions and have honest dialogue in a way that will be meaningful to the deceased and their families. Do I know what to do personally? No. What I do know is that it should be tailored to each individual person.

I tell my family that I do not want a funeral. I say, “burn me, throw me out in the wind and then later when the clouds settle, get together, have dinner and laugh while you talk about what an asshole I was. Absolutely do not let anyone preach or pray over me. No condolence gifts that someone will need to deal with later. If you cannot resist doing something, spend no money, just pick flowers from the side of the road. When my time comes, I do not want to take up space on this earth anymore. It seems wasteful to me. Please don’t tell my family that you are sorry for their loss. We all know you are sorry. We never lose when we have gotten the chance to love our family members no matter what amount of time we shared with them. Maybe, “how are you feeling” or “when you are feeling better, I’d love to hear more about her.” I think anything more than that is asking a lot from a person grieving. They need their space to mourn. I’m not sure how we got here but I would love to see us shake this convention up instead of making people respond to sorry for your loss 1,000 times.

Just know that if the old way stays the convention, I will play along but I will also try to infuse a little something different when I can.