Here's One (for real) Obituary you hope will NEVER be your own!

[gategrrl]

Check this out. Isn't this simply the saddest, but most honest obit ever? Reminds me of Speaker for the Dead, where Ender created a new profession of a person who would investigate and the retell (with resultant lessons) a dead person's life, with brutal, yet regulated honesty about that person. Personally, I think it's probably the most brilliant thing Orson Scott Card ever came up with.

Thanks to Adeline on Isle of Whack on Delphi for this lead.

Comments

[agentotter.livejournal.com]

AGREED. I always thought the Speaker for the Dead concept was perhaps one of the most brilliant societal ideas ever to come out of scifi. I'd love to have an obit like this when it's my time to go... though I hope that I've made a better impression on the world than this woman did.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Well, it's interesting...when my grandmother (my mother's mother) died about five years back, I flew across country to be with my mom and our small extended family on that side.

My mother actually said to the officiant at the wake/dinner, that she didn't think anyone had anything to say about my grandmother. My grandmother was an incredibly lonely, unhappy person who ticked off a lot of her grandkids with her behavior.

But when I decided to tell it like it was--that I loved how my grandmother finished every project she started, and she made so many of them, and how I thought it tragic that she didn't think she was creative in the least...that got the rest of my family telling stories about her. It included some negative stuff along with the happy stuff, but she was like so many other people. She was human, and had her good side and bad side and mixed side, and, no matter how mixed I feel about her now, I miss her the way she was when I was a kid. I still miss her.

What's horribly sad about the woman in that obit was that NO one had *anything* good to say about her. But it happens. I feel sorry for her children and grandchildren. I hope they're able to work past her influence.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

Actually, the description of her sounds spot on like my father and both my grandmothers. Esp. the chameleon thing. So I really enjoyed this vicariously.

I actually can find some positive things to say about my dad, but honestly? They're all ironic. Like, he instilled feminism in me by being a sexist pig. He taught me how to manipulate people, which is important if you're trying to claw your way out of poverty and into the middle class. So, you know, it's kind of not worth trying to name the positive stuff, because it boils down to "Thanks for the combat training you provided - it sure helped when I had to face other bullies out in the world."

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

You know, I do not in the least condemn the woman who wrote that obit for her mother. That obit was mentioned in a thread on Delphi that generated a lot of "MY GOD, how *classless!*, how MEAN, how HORRIBLE! that the woman who wrote it was to put it out in public.

Well, I'm not sorry: there are toxic people in this world, and they're toxic for their own reasons or for how they were raised (no fault of their own) but people like the woman who died ARE responsible for untold havok, personal difficulties in their families, abuse, deformation or their children, whatever. It doesn't matter what the reason. If it's how her children saw her, that's how they saw her, and the mourning of a death is NOT the same for everyone, nor should social convention reign over all.

Yeah, some of the self-righteousness in that Delphi thread got to me. Not everyone is a nice person. Not everyone feels they should conform to an outmoded mourning form.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

I think most people buy into the idea of "family first" no matter what. Which is a big part of why abusers manage to keep doing what they're doing secretly for generations. Everyone should be aware this stuff happens, and not just, you know, in the projects or wherever it is people imagine awful stuff to be safely confined. It really says a lot that we're all shocked - pleasantly or unpleasantly - that this person had the nerve to write the truth in an obit.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

it's kind of not worth trying to name the positive stuff, because it boils down to "Thanks for the combat training you provided - it sure helped when I had to face other bullies out in the world."

There's that. Yeah. Creepy uncle? Okay, I know how to avoid creepies now. Abusive boyfriend? You did me a favor by making me realize that even smart people can be real shitheads and I won't go out with another abusive asshole again. I know totally what you mean.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

I do actually have some pity(?) for my father because I knew both his mother and his mother's mother, and saw that they were abusive and crazy. But his new family will write his obit, I'm sure. ;)