How do you speak of the dead? With people who knew Jen in life, I feel comfortable just using her name. I've found over time that other people rarely mention Jen - perhaps they believe they should spare me the grief of recollection, when in fact I long to hear her name from others and know that her life still matters to them.
But from early on, I've made an effort to change my language to acknowledge what's changed. Trivially, this starts with saying "I" where I would have said "we", although I do occasionally slip into that royal plural and correct it. I don't speak now of my "parents-in-law" or "sister-in-law", but rather of Jen's parents and Jen's sister. This might sound pedantic, but it's a recognition that I'm not married anymore.
Yet as more time elapses, I meet more people who never knew Jen in life, and so I can't refer to her by name without a longer explanation. So I now I find myself speaking of "my wife's family" - realizing that I am now giving the misleading impression that I just sought to avoid. Yet it's difficult to talk about my life or the boys or my history without talking about Jen, even indirectly.
I don't particularly want the sympathy or the embarassment of relative strangers, so I find that I avoid talking about Jen's death unless someone asks about her. Most people don't, whether from politeness or lack or curiosity. I imagine they assume I'm divorced, or perhaps they do catch the odd past tense in my speech and join the dots. It's interesting to see how long it takes. One parent I'd known for several months (through a sporting team) asked me whether my wife would be travelling with me overseas, so I had to explain that she couldn't, being dead.
The most obvious adjective that I've so far avoided is "late". If I say "my late wife", I give the story in the most compact way, but it sounds odd. We are so much more comfortable with divorce than bereavement that "ex-wife" sounds natural by comparison. Not that Jen was a very punctual person, but it may be a while before I can speak of Jen's lateness in those initial stages of acquaintance.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I just read this article and thought I would share a bit of it as it speaks to themes in your blog...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.americamagazine.org/content/culture.cfm?cultureid=120
"The power of David and the strength of Samson are cut away; the two are stripped of their facile certainties, and their promising lives topple into the dust. The man who composed songs of praise with such aplomb and the man whose strength was the envy of all, now find themselves in a stark and barren place. When we fall to sin, we wake up to bitterness. We realize that love is not the easy triumph we once imagined it to be:
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.
When we find ourselves in desolation, we ask: How can we stay alive when we have kissed death? Is faith still possible? Has love lost its savor and sweetness? David, Samson and all of us are vulnerable, exposed to the chill of a spiritual wasteland. Yet we need not surrender to despair; instead, we can find our way forward to a new way of hoping and praising God, though one devoid of sugary sweetness and false romanticism. We no longer come before God with full arms, but only with empty hands"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKnxmkOAj88