Is anyone else looking forward to January 31st as much as I am? I’m not sure that I’ll subject y’all (and myself) to daily posts in February. It just seems kind of cruel.
Can I just say that greeting card companies need to get it together and produce some decent sympathy cards? The selection at the store I visited was admittedly limited, but who wants to hear “With deepest sympathy and fond remembrance” when someone they love dies? That just makes me mad.
Fond remembrance? Who talks like that? And the people who do, are they just getting smacked constantly or what? Because the idea of telling someone you’re sending them fond remembrance just seems so pitifully weak and worthless. Screw fond remembrance. It does not strike me as a fit antidote for grief.
Went to spinning guild today. Left when the “What’s this world coming to? We’re all going to hell in a handbasket” crap started. My doom and gloom quota for the week was filled long about Tuesday morning, and we’ve got a few pips in the group who like to complain about you name it. I personally think the world would be a lot better off if most people just quit watching the news, but it’s still a free country, which is a good thing.
More hiding in the bed for me tonight and this weekend. I know that hibernation might not be the world’s best strategy for dealing with things, but it sure feels right today.
Here’s what I think should go on a sympathy card (ok, just the bold part at the end, but I’m including the rest for the sake of context and the sheer poetry of the passage):
“She thought of the women… who shrieked over the bier and at the lip of the open grave. What she had regarded since as unbecoming behavior seemed fitting to her now; they were screaming at the neck of God, his giant nape, the vast back-of-the-head that he had turned on them in death. But it seemed to her now that it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a simple obligation to say something, do something, feel something about the dead. They could not let that heart-smashing event pass unrecorded, unidentified. It was poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere whimpering, a slight murmur, a rose bouquet of good taste. Good taste was out of place in the company of death, death itself was the essence of bad taste. And there must be much rage and saliva in its presence. The body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss.” (Toni Morrison, Sula)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, what an amazing passage. Makes me think about the disaster in Haiti.
I hate sympathy cards, too. In the face of death, what do you say to someone? How do I let a card speak for me? I feel so terribly awkward and stupid. So I just hug the person and try to be there for them in whatever way I can. That’s what I would want, anyway.
For the right person, I think that passage would be hugely comforting because they would feel *heard* and understood. What a spectacular piece of writing.
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