I think my favorite livejournal activity is to follow this other guy's updated links to dead people's myspace accounts. This is the latest: http://www.myspace.com/crazidaowowRead more... )
Who teaches us how to grieve? No one. We hide it, it's not acceptable, no one knows how to anymore. We make hollow motions and false statements of sympathy. When I was 40 I lost my closest friend to the first wave of AIDS, before anti-retrovirals, and I did not know what to do with all of the pain. I wanted a reason for the tears, I did not know how to just be sad. Those who wail and weep and throw themselves into the street, wild with their loss, they know what we have forgotten - that the human bond has more power than any other. Only when we again teach this to our children will our culture begin to heal. They do as they only know how, these who post so poorly their loss. Where is the one who would teach us how to know or feelings, to cry when we are sad? As you can tell, I know this place too well. Sorry for the sermon.
well fuck you drew! how do you know they didn't do in person too? i know for a fact that they did. i went to high school with christine dao and all of those people and i dont appreciate your assumptions about their methods of showing grief.
I'm sure they did. That's my point; when they expressed their grief in person, did they do so in an informal/disrespectful a manner as the way some of those people did online?
'U wr gr8!!!1' is hardly a way to memorialize somebody, and the spoken equivalence of that would not be seen as eloquent or appropriate at a funeral.
This kind of stuff: "R.I.P. CHRISTINE, U WERE TRULY A BEAUTIFUL PERSON INSIDE AND OUT, I WAS SHOCKED TOO HEAR THE TERRIBLE NEWS, UR SPIRIT WILL LIVE ON AND U WILL BE GREATLY MISSED!!!"
or this: "What can I say I just talk to u two days ago n then this hits me...I still can't believe it n i refuse to believe it. Ur my sister n I miss u so much already. Rest in Peace my little sis...I'll always miss u. R.I.P."
or this: "..... words can't even describle how i feel right now..... but i know that your in a better place now! REST IN PEACE ... you'll always be in our hearts <3 MISS YOu
( ... )
It is exactly situations like these that require the wisdom and grace that only come with age. Most likely, someone who is 20 years old hasn't had the experience of losing a close friend or family member, or they haven't been very aware of the gestures that other people make. Though I have lost several grandparents, great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, it wasn't until my grandfather died last winter when I was 20 that it really struck me how important it was that my family's friends came forward with notes, flowers, and food. No one teaches people to do this, they just see it in action and understand why. Part of growing up is learning how to make an appropriate gesture when someone experiences a death, birth, or other major event. Part of that learning is experiencing it for yourself
( ... )
I wouldn't be so harsh in judging people's expressions of grief, especially those who are so young and inexperienced in dealing with death. I assume that these people just lost a good friend; this is not the time to pick on their spelling/internet abbreviations. I think that's pretty callous.
I had a knock-down fight with Whitney about this that she may never forgive me for. But the point isn't to call those people stupid. The point is that our society has so profoundly mis- and under- educated teenagers that they misspell their poorly communicated memorials.
It's not that they're dumb, or that their grief is being diminished by my comments. But society is doing something profoundly wrong if those expressions of grief seem appropriate to people.
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Those who wail and weep and throw themselves into the street, wild with their loss, they know what we have forgotten - that the human bond has more power than any other. Only when we again teach this to our children will our culture begin to heal. They do as they only know how, these who post so poorly their loss. Where is the one who would teach us how to know or feelings, to cry when we are sad?
As you can tell, I know this place too well. Sorry for the sermon.
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'U wr gr8!!!1' is hardly a way to memorialize somebody, and the spoken equivalence of that would not be seen as eloquent or appropriate at a funeral.
This kind of stuff:
"R.I.P. CHRISTINE, U WERE TRULY A BEAUTIFUL PERSON INSIDE AND OUT, I WAS SHOCKED TOO HEAR THE TERRIBLE NEWS, UR SPIRIT WILL LIVE ON AND U WILL BE GREATLY MISSED!!!"
or this:
"What can I say I just talk to u two days ago n then this hits me...I still can't believe it n i refuse to believe it. Ur my sister n I miss u so much already. Rest in Peace my little sis...I'll always miss u. R.I.P."
or this:
"..... words can't even describle how i feel right now..... but i know that your in a better place now! REST IN PEACE ... you'll always be in our hearts <3 MISS YOu ( ... )
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It's not that they're dumb, or that their grief is being diminished by my comments. But society is doing something profoundly wrong if those expressions of grief seem appropriate to people.
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