Once you’re gone…
Have you noticed how super-nice they are to you once you are dead? While you’re around, criticism never ceases to end. Something is off…
Have you noticed how super-nice they are to you once you are dead? While you’re around, criticism never ceases to end. Something is off here, something could be better there. But once you drop dead, you turn into a paragon of sheer amazement. All your flaws either disappear or dim. Nobody points out a perished human’s underachievement or misdemeanors at his funeral. The societal screensaver stays on for a while.
So, why exactly do we carry out this typical charade? Is it because death is a mortal reminder of where we are heading irrespective of which directions we take in life? Or is it because of raw decency? Or is there a bigger plot at play? In the wild, the birds and the animals and the reptiles leave their dead beloved companions to rot. Mourning is temporary, survival is perennial. We don’t follow the same due to our civic sense more than anything else. For some reason, everybody deserves a farewell whether the departed believes in god or not. And all goodbyes remain soaked in sentimentality.
A part of this behaviour has something to do with who we are and a part of it has something to do with who we want to be. Even if the dead person happens to be a Hitler or a Mao, we can’t afford to defile the corpse; even an Osama bin Laden got a decent sea burial. In other words, we don’t fuck with death. We have our share of grievances with being alive but when it’s time to go, we try to make the passage as photo-friendly as possible. Let there be flowers, sandalwood, a box, some incense sticks along with hymns nobody really understands.
As a bystander, if you’re weeping, no need for you to spill kind words. Your tears are your affidavit to silence. If you can’t bring yourself to cry, share some sugarcoated words for the person who once was. Or at least tried to be.
Sounds like an admirable sign of evolution, doesn’t it?