I said the following below, and maybe somebody here can provide a statement that will save me from my worst instincts about my maternal grandmother, who turns 99 in January after having spent a lifetime of doing nothing. Her body, having little actual wear or tear, is outpacing her mind, which was, for most of her life, a shriveled and hateful repository of petty jealousy, peevishness, greed, sloth, racism and hatred.
I’ll be struggling to come up with something to say at whatever visitation and funeral happens after her passing. I have to be there for my mother and my aunt, but I’m damned if I can think up anything to say to people who say “So sorry for your loss” beyond this shitty statement:
“I’m not. She was nasty, lazy, manipulative and greedy, and hated humanity just for sharing her air. Her passing sorrows nobody but my mother, who allowed herself to be an uncompensated daily servant and whipping girl for over 45 years for a woman who couldn’t be bothered to take her own trash out to the cans when she was in her mid 50s”
4.
Svensker
Jets doing their best impression of mid-level high school play. Oy.
5.
burnspbesq
There wasfootball. Man City and Spurs were both lucky to win.
I’ve been saying all season that the Jets would struggle in the Big North Conference. That may have given them too much credit. They might struggle against Group 1 and 2 schools.
People say “Sorry for your loss,” you respond “Thank you.”
There is no need to go further.
10.
Mike J
Hamilton is gonna win it, even starting behind Rosberg.
11.
Tree With Water
@Botsplainer: You should peruse Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel for tips that might help inspire you in writing that eulogy. I doubt any author ever lived who portrayed his family in a more blistering light.
Maybe I misread Botsplainer’s comment, but I didn’t think (s)he was talking about having to deliver a eulogy — merely of having to respond to people who express sympathy.
14.
Ruckus
@Botsplainer:
Hard to make a positive funeral speech when you don’t feel you have anything resembling positive to say.
I was told by a relative how I was supposed to feel about a family member’s passing and my scathing remarks about being in my sixties and having my own fucking opinion didn’t go down well. But I didn’t care. But I did come to figure out that it didn’t make any difference what I felt when that family member was alive and it would make even less of a difference after their passing.
So you could do exactly what I did.
Say nothing.
15.
Howard Beale IV
@hilts: I just saw another so-called denier website pop-up with a whole bunch of supporters-some climate scientist but the bulk of them are-yep-meterologists.
Time to start calling these clowns what they really are: The Know-Nothings/Lysenko of Earth and Climatology.
16.
Iowa Old Lady
@Botsplainer: Say thank you to well wishers. To your mom, say “How are you going, Mom? What can I do for you?”
ETA: Basically, none of this is about your grandmother, who will be gone, thank god. It’s about the feelings of the living.
From what you wrote it appears that the most direct and presumably also persistent victim of your grandmother was your mother, And it also appears that she would be the one most aggrieved if you go through with saying what you wrote there. Even if it is all true, you might want to consider not doing it for your mother’s sake. I think SiubhanDuinne’s advice was a good one.
Saying anything other than “thank you” is acting like the assholes who are offended by “happy holidays.”
When people express a kind sentiment, accept it graciously.
19.
Amir Khalid
@Botsplainer:
I sympathise with the temptation to say these things. But wait until the funeral is over and the potential witnesses have left her grave. Then you can offer your well-justified malediction, and even follow it up with a gob of spit.
After which, and this is the most important part, you put her out of your mind forever.
@Botsplainer: A note from a reader on Robert Aiken’s view of death
Flint, you also read another quote of Aitken Roshi in which he recalled that after sharing life with his wife for decades he knew her every weakness, her conditioning – and she knew his. He said when she died those weaknesses also died and she was left as who she really was, who we all really are – a Buddha. You then challenged us to drop that conditioning, those things that keep us from acting like the Buddha we are, now. Don’t wait. It’s true when I think of those I loved who’ve passed on, they have no flaws. All is forgiven. It sounds so simple to just let go of these habits now. And you reminded us: that’s the practice. To reduce the gap between whom we think we are now and our Buddha Nature. Thank you.
@Botsplainer: I know some people in my family were ambivalent about my grandma’s death. Well, not so much some, but most. But attending the funeral was nice because I got to see lots of family that I hadn’t seen in a while.
22.
shelley
Will be so happy when we’re finally past Tuesday and whatever happens will have happened.
So sick of every talking head on every cable show, and every editorialist (even my favorite progressive ones) absolutely certain that the Democrats are in for a ‘shellacking.’ And the reasons they give…..just makes you more despairing of the American voter. The ‘six year fatigue’ where people want some kind of change, even if it’s bad. And examples like, people in Kentucky loving KYnect, till they realize it is Obamacare, and then they’re all
negative.
A couple of years ago my cousin had a daughter who died suddenly. We didn’t know her but the funeral was on our way back from the holidays in Virginia so we went. It was a Southern Baptist affair and these folks were celebrating the fact that she died and left three kids because now she was with Jesus. We hung in there and ended up in the family receiving line that must have had 300 people in it. We stood and had them all express their condolences to us for the loss and we just kept saying thank you.
24.
decitect
Stuck with Chargers being blown-out by the Dolphins – would probably enjoy the Jets game if I could get it.
25.
Tree With Water
@SiubhanDuinne: Ah, again I skimmed rather than read. I had last read or even thought about Look Homeward maybe 25 years ago, too, but for some reason it sprang to mind.
26.
Libby's person
We took down the tomato plants today (it’s supposed to go below freezing tonight), so I have a lot of green tomatoes to deal with. Anyone have any good recipe ideas? (Other than frying them, which I already plan to do.)
27.
JPL
@hilts: So CNN has to give an angry white guy a forum for nonsense pablum. They really, really, really want to be foxlight.
It’s been a good 50 years for me. I should haul it out and see how well it stands up to re-reading.
I skim threads all the time, and thus am forever getting things wrong, or plowing ahead and answering questions or comments that turn out to have been much better addressed, earlier, by others.
(Corrected from an earlier thread in which inadvertently listed wrong day.)
Recall several people here expressing a liking for Clara Bow, a/k/a “The It Girl.”
Well, the source of that moniker will be shown Monday at 9:30 p.m. (Eastern) on TCM, when 1927’s It airs. An 80-minute primer on what was considered sexy during Prohibition,
@shelley: The six-year election factor is major and normal. When a president is elected by big numbers the way Obama was, the coat tails drag some senators into office who otherwise wouldn’t have been elected. At the 6-year mark, those senators are up for re-election and you get some correction back to normal.
The press treats this like some sort of revelation. It’s not.
Went to the National Museum of the American Indian for lunch and bumped into an college classmate. She was exhibiting an ofrenda for Dia de los Muertos.
You can wrap each tomato in a piece of newsprint and store them in a dry, airy place. They’ll ripen nicely (keep an eye on them and rotate occasionally, check for moldy spots) and taste at least better than supermarket maters.
@Elizabelle: Yup, I guess that’s why they call it “practice”.
42.
Corner Stone
Anybody recently tell Nate Silver to shut the fuck up? Fucking pimp.
43.
Daniel'sBob
@SiubhanDuinne: How is it possible that we were raised by the same mother and yet have never met?
44.
Corner Stone
Nice skip pass RGCheese!
Oh, wait. You can’t take a one bouncer to a WR?!
When the hell was that put in the rule books?
45.
PurpleGirl
@Shakezula: Wow! Those installations are beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
46.
cckids
@Botsplainer: I had the same problem with my “grandmother”. She’s my stepmother’s mother, but while my stepmother was & is Mom, her mother I’ll never claim as family. She was a mean, grasping, passive-aggressive old bag who made it clear from the day Mom & Dad married that she didn’t like or want the added baggage of non-blood related children.
So, at her funeral, when her kids/grandkids were sobbing & grieving, all I could do was look serious & pass the Kleenex, wondering at the difference in our perception of her.
I chose to respond to the “Sorry for your loss” with “Thank you”. Nothing more.
Though as people pointed out above, “This will be hard on my mother” also works. Really, people are trying to be polite & compassionate, the details of grandma’s failings fall into the “not my circus, not my monkeys” land.
It’s even more amazing that there are so many of us!
51.
Suzanne
@Botsplainer: Or just say, “She’s in a better place now,” which is hilarious if you don’t believe in any sort of afterlife.
Or say, “Thank you, please send good vibes/prayers/best wishes toward her daughters, who are struggling with this today” and thereby deflect it while not lying.
52.
Corner Stone
Rut Roh.
Tonight’s Sunday Night Game is BAL at PIT.
Can the WV Dynamic Duo (sans masks and tights…maybe) survive this kind of emotional conflict?
53.
max
@Shakezula: Went to the National Museum of the American Indian for lunch and bumped into an college classmate. She was exhibiting an ofrenda for Dia de los Muertos.
That’s the best museum in DC. (And her work is very nice.)
@Mustang Bobby: So who is this team playing the Chargers in Miami? I don’t recognize them.
I won’t say you’ll feel differently once she’s dead, but I can tell you that when my excessively unpleasant granny goose-stepped off this mortal coil I found two things:
1. I was too busy to do anything but give an absent-minded nod in response to the standard condolences.
2. Everyone who knew her knew she was awful so we didn’t get many standard condolences. We got a lot of “How are you doing?” and “Well, at least she isn’t suffering any more,” because everyone understood that we – her care-takers – weren’t exactly grief-stricken.
3. I did not feel any differently about her, but it did take me a while to realixe there were certain things I’d never have to worry about any more.
p.s. Don’t dance on the grave until you’re sure the soil has settled.
55.
Mike J
Legion of boom.
56.
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: FWIW, seems legit to me. But such statements are always shocking to people who weren’t raised in an atmosphere of selfishness, sadism, and cruelty. They literally can’t conceive of the idea that a parent could withhold love and treat a child like a slave.
57.
Another Holocene Human
@Ruckus: This. When somebody has tormented you, had an overwhelmingly negative influence on your life, it can be very painful, even retraumatizing to have that person be praised and lionized by others. Maybe they only saw one side of that person, or maybe they’re a Pollyanna, or maybe they’re being polite, or maybe they knew everything and told you to suck it up and stop whining, basically minimizing what was going on, your whole life.
Sometimes people do need to speak their truth. IDK. This is how abusers get by. Because it becomes literally unconscionable for the victims to speak. Think about the implications of that. That it’s more harmful to the family and survivors to acknowledge the truth than to keep silencing the survivors, keep gaslighting everyone, keep pretending that nothing is wrong or was ever wrong.
@Howard Beale IV: Don’t say Lysenko … some idiots who don’t understand epigenetics will pop up to scream that Lysenko was right all along.
sigh…
60.
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Really? You get horribly offended when you offer a bland sentiment about somebody you don’t know and the family member answers with “Actually, I’m not sorry so-and-so is dead. Long story, but let’s just say so-and-so can’t hurt anybody any more.”
And you feel like you ran into a raging Billo fan?
@Mike J: You watching this? I know that Steve Raible announces on the radio, but I’m in SoCal and watching* these announcer clowns rooting for the Raiders. Bah.
Random thought I have a second computer handy. Maybe I can find that radio station and play that and turn off these ninnies.
*Hooray for Dish Anywhere!
63.
Bonnie
The Seahawks are having their way with the hapless Oakland Raiders.
64.
opiejeanne
@Bonnie: Yes, and the national announcers are almost cheering for the Raiders.
And I’m out of area right now so i can’t listen to Steve Raible unless I give ESPN some money. Or maybe it’s the NFL that wants my money. Blah.
Instead, why not throw a party somewhere nearby afterwards? Send out a note before the funeral to everyone that there will be a family get together afterwards (with drinks, food, music–whatever you intend it to be), and as you see them at the funeral, say thanks and casually remind them of the party to keep it in people’s minds.
Try to throw the most fun, outrageous, and best party you can. Your grandmother probably would hate it, and when you think back on her life and funeral you can instead think about what a great time that party was . . .
Incidentally, my mother, when she goes, wants her funeral to be a party with lots of fun and dancing. I’ve always thought that was a great idea . . .
I’m in SoCal and watching* these announcer clowns rooting for the Raiders. Bah.
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, in that their job is to keep the half dozen people in the Bay Area that are watching this from switching to the 49ers-Rams.
72.
Mike J
@raven: That’s Mr. Acker Bilk to you. And everybody else. That’s how he was billed on his hit single.
73.
Ruckus
@Jasmine Bleach:
When my time comes I’d like the truth to be told. You want to celebrate my death? Have a party. You want to morn my death? Have a party. I won’t care, other than I won’t be able to attend, I’ll be dead. No one shows up? I’ll still be dead.
Co-founder of the Weather Channel went full wingnut on CNN this morning when discussing climate change.
That is so strange.. I mean if you’re a business to weather, having something you can talk about all the time and have more viewership sounds like a good thing. I would think they would embrace that shit..
Shouldn’t be a problem.
“That guy who slept on other peoples’ couches for the last 15 years?”
“Yeah”
“Ok, sounds like pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off? Pringles?”
“Yep. Sounds about right.”
76.
Bill Murray
@Heliopause: so someone else remembers Kim McQuilken
Tree With Water
I caught the Frontline report on concussions this week. It was an eye opener, and its conclusions bode ill for the game. Go Niners..
hilts
Co-founder of the Weather Channel went full wingnut on CNN this morning when discussing climate change.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-weather-channel-ceo-goes-off-on-cnn-hello-everybody-theres-no-global-warming
Botsplainer
I said the following below, and maybe somebody here can provide a statement that will save me from my worst instincts about my maternal grandmother, who turns 99 in January after having spent a lifetime of doing nothing. Her body, having little actual wear or tear, is outpacing her mind, which was, for most of her life, a shriveled and hateful repository of petty jealousy, peevishness, greed, sloth, racism and hatred.
I’ll be struggling to come up with something to say at whatever visitation and funeral happens after her passing. I have to be there for my mother and my aunt, but I’m damned if I can think up anything to say to people who say “So sorry for your loss” beyond this shitty statement:
Svensker
Jets doing their best impression of mid-level high school play. Oy.
burnspbesq
There wasfootball. Man City and Spurs were both lucky to win.
Now there is handegg.
Svensker
@Botsplainer:
How about “She was quite a woman. My mother will really miss her.” :)
Baud
@Botsplainer:
Thank her for her recessive genes?
burnspbesq
@Svensker:
I’ve been saying all season that the Jets would struggle in the Big North Conference. That may have given them too much credit. They might struggle against Group 1 and 2 schools.
SiubhanDuinne
@Botsplainer:
People say “Sorry for your loss,” you respond “Thank you.”
There is no need to go further.
Mike J
Hamilton is gonna win it, even starting behind Rosberg.
Tree With Water
@Botsplainer: You should peruse Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel for tips that might help inspire you in writing that eulogy. I doubt any author ever lived who portrayed his family in a more blistering light.
dmsilev
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yeah, this. If nothing else, don’t make your mother’s day worse than it already will be.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tree With Water:
Maybe I misread Botsplainer’s comment, but I didn’t think (s)he was talking about having to deliver a eulogy — merely of having to respond to people who express sympathy.
Ruckus
@Botsplainer:
Hard to make a positive funeral speech when you don’t feel you have anything resembling positive to say.
I was told by a relative how I was supposed to feel about a family member’s passing and my scathing remarks about being in my sixties and having my own fucking opinion didn’t go down well. But I didn’t care. But I did come to figure out that it didn’t make any difference what I felt when that family member was alive and it would make even less of a difference after their passing.
So you could do exactly what I did.
Say nothing.
Howard Beale IV
@hilts: I just saw another so-called denier website pop-up with a whole bunch of supporters-some climate scientist but the bulk of them are-yep-meterologists.
Time to start calling these clowns what they really are: The Know-Nothings/Lysenko of Earth and Climatology.
Iowa Old Lady
@Botsplainer: Say thank you to well wishers. To your mom, say “How are you going, Mom? What can I do for you?”
ETA: Basically, none of this is about your grandmother, who will be gone, thank god. It’s about the feelings of the living.
SRW1
@Botsplainer:
From what you wrote it appears that the most direct and presumably also persistent victim of your grandmother was your mother, And it also appears that she would be the one most aggrieved if you go through with saying what you wrote there. Even if it is all true, you might want to consider not doing it for your mother’s sake. I think SiubhanDuinne’s advice was a good one.
Mike J
@Iowa Old Lady:
Saying anything other than “thank you” is acting like the assholes who are offended by “happy holidays.”
When people express a kind sentiment, accept it graciously.
Amir Khalid
@Botsplainer:
I sympathise with the temptation to say these things. But wait until the funeral is over and the potential witnesses have left her grave. Then you can offer your well-justified malediction, and even follow it up with a gob of spit.
After which, and this is the most important part, you put her out of your mind forever.
raven
@Botsplainer: A note from a reader on Robert Aiken’s view of death
SatanicPanic
@Botsplainer: I know some people in my family were ambivalent about my grandma’s death. Well, not so much some, but most. But attending the funeral was nice because I got to see lots of family that I hadn’t seen in a while.
shelley
Will be so happy when we’re finally past Tuesday and whatever happens will have happened.
So sick of every talking head on every cable show, and every editorialist (even my favorite progressive ones) absolutely certain that the Democrats are in for a ‘shellacking.’ And the reasons they give…..just makes you more despairing of the American voter. The ‘six year fatigue’ where people want some kind of change, even if it’s bad. And examples like, people in Kentucky loving KYnect, till they realize it is Obamacare, and then they’re all
negative.
raven
A couple of years ago my cousin had a daughter who died suddenly. We didn’t know her but the funeral was on our way back from the holidays in Virginia so we went. It was a Southern Baptist affair and these folks were celebrating the fact that she died and left three kids because now she was with Jesus. We hung in there and ended up in the family receiving line that must have had 300 people in it. We stood and had them all express their condolences to us for the loss and we just kept saying thank you.
decitect
Stuck with Chargers being blown-out by the Dolphins – would probably enjoy the Jets game if I could get it.
Tree With Water
@SiubhanDuinne: Ah, again I skimmed rather than read. I had last read or even thought about Look Homeward maybe 25 years ago, too, but for some reason it sprang to mind.
Libby's person
We took down the tomato plants today (it’s supposed to go below freezing tonight), so I have a lot of green tomatoes to deal with. Anyone have any good recipe ideas? (Other than frying them, which I already plan to do.)
JPL
@hilts: So CNN has to give an angry white guy a forum for nonsense pablum. They really, really, really want to be foxlight.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tree With Water:
It’s been a good 50 years for me. I should haul it out and see how well it stands up to re-reading.
I skim threads all the time, and thus am forever getting things wrong, or plowing ahead and answering questions or comments that turn out to have been much better addressed, earlier, by others.
shelley
@Libby’s person: A green tomato pie is always a nice surprise to serve. Reminds people that tomatoes really are fruit. Heres a Food Network recipe http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/green-tomato-pie-recipe.html
This is a traditional 2 crust pie. The kind I’ve made is more of an open face tart.
There’s also green tomato chutney and other kinds of relish.
A savory green tomato cobbler
http://food52.com/recipes/26574-savory-green-tomato-cobbler
NotMax
(Corrected from an earlier thread in which inadvertently listed wrong day.)
Recall several people here expressing a liking for Clara Bow, a/k/a “The It Girl.”
Well, the source of that moniker will be shown Monday at 9:30 p.m. (Eastern) on TCM, when 1927’s It airs. An 80-minute primer on what was considered sexy during Prohibition,
Ferdzy
@Libby’s person:
Chow-Chow: best relish ever.
Iowa Old Lady
@shelley: The six-year election factor is major and normal. When a president is elected by big numbers the way Obama was, the coat tails drag some senators into office who otherwise wouldn’t have been elected. At the 6-year mark, those senators are up for re-election and you get some correction back to normal.
The press treats this like some sort of revelation. It’s not.
hilts
Kansas State coach Bill Snyder apologized for being in an ad for Sen. Pat Roberts
h/t http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/bill-snyder-apologizes-for-appearance-in-ad-for-sen–pat-roberts-191257986.html
2liberal
Pats over Denver is the NFL equivalent of a Democratic Senate. Pull for the pats
Mike J
Hamilton passes!
Mustang Bobby
So who is this team playing the Chargers in Miami? I don’t recognize them.
Elizabelle
@Botsplainer:
The advice to be gracious (if not strictly truthful) and be there for your mother is best. She is going to have a harder time than you think.
Nothing to stop you from writing whatever you wish in a private journal though, or drawing some wicked cartoons. Key word is private.
@raven: liked your comment about the death of flaws; it’s comforting. But this is the hard part:
Really hard to do. Useful, even, but hard. I’ve not managed yet.
Gator90
@Mustang Bobby: I don’t either, but I sure hope to see them again soon.
Shakezula
Went to the National Museum of the American Indian for lunch and bumped into an college classmate. She was exhibiting an ofrenda for Dia de los Muertos.
Some examples of her work. (Imagine everything is 100x more sparkly.)
Svensker
@Libby’s person:
You can wrap each tomato in a piece of newsprint and store them in a dry, airy place. They’ll ripen nicely (keep an eye on them and rotate occasionally, check for moldy spots) and taste at least better than supermarket maters.
raven
@Elizabelle: Yup, I guess that’s why they call it “practice”.
Corner Stone
Anybody recently tell Nate Silver to shut the fuck up? Fucking pimp.
Daniel'sBob
@SiubhanDuinne: How is it possible that we were raised by the same mother and yet have never met?
Corner Stone
Nice skip pass RGCheese!
Oh, wait. You can’t take a one bouncer to a WR?!
When the hell was that put in the rule books?
PurpleGirl
@Shakezula: Wow! Those installations are beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
cckids
@Botsplainer: I had the same problem with my “grandmother”. She’s my stepmother’s mother, but while my stepmother was & is Mom, her mother I’ll never claim as family. She was a mean, grasping, passive-aggressive old bag who made it clear from the day Mom & Dad married that she didn’t like or want the added baggage of non-blood related children.
So, at her funeral, when her kids/grandkids were sobbing & grieving, all I could do was look serious & pass the Kleenex, wondering at the difference in our perception of her.
I chose to respond to the “Sorry for your loss” with “Thank you”. Nothing more.
Though as people pointed out above, “This will be hard on my mother” also works. Really, people are trying to be polite & compassionate, the details of grandma’s failings fall into the “not my circus, not my monkeys” land.
raven
Betty Boop: I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You (1932)
Cain
I am enjoying the newsmax sidebar ads. :P
Libby's person
@shelley: Thanks – those both sound wonderful! I’ll give the pie a try.
SiubhanDuinne
@Daniel’sBob:
It’s even more amazing that there are so many of us!
Suzanne
@Botsplainer: Or just say, “She’s in a better place now,” which is hilarious if you don’t believe in any sort of afterlife.
Or say, “Thank you, please send good vibes/prayers/best wishes toward her daughters, who are struggling with this today” and thereby deflect it while not lying.
Corner Stone
Rut Roh.
Tonight’s Sunday Night Game is BAL at PIT.
Can the WV Dynamic Duo (sans masks and tights…maybe) survive this kind of emotional conflict?
max
@Shakezula: Went to the National Museum of the American Indian for lunch and bumped into an college classmate. She was exhibiting an ofrenda for Dia de los Muertos.
That’s the best museum in DC. (And her work is very nice.)
@Mustang Bobby: So who is this team playing the Chargers in Miami? I don’t recognize them.
Who was the team playing against Miami?
max
[‘They were really bad.’]
Shakezula
@Botsplainer: She’s not dead yet?
I won’t say you’ll feel differently once she’s dead, but I can tell you that when my excessively unpleasant granny goose-stepped off this mortal coil I found two things:
1. I was too busy to do anything but give an absent-minded nod in response to the standard condolences.
2. Everyone who knew her knew she was awful so we didn’t get many standard condolences. We got a lot of “How are you doing?” and “Well, at least she isn’t suffering any more,” because everyone understood that we – her care-takers – weren’t exactly grief-stricken.
3. I did not feel any differently about her, but it did take me a while to realixe there were certain things I’d never have to worry about any more.
p.s. Don’t dance on the grave until you’re sure the soil has settled.
Mike J
Legion of boom.
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: FWIW, seems legit to me. But such statements are always shocking to people who weren’t raised in an atmosphere of selfishness, sadism, and cruelty. They literally can’t conceive of the idea that a parent could withhold love and treat a child like a slave.
Another Holocene Human
@Ruckus: This. When somebody has tormented you, had an overwhelmingly negative influence on your life, it can be very painful, even retraumatizing to have that person be praised and lionized by others. Maybe they only saw one side of that person, or maybe they’re a Pollyanna, or maybe they’re being polite, or maybe they knew everything and told you to suck it up and stop whining, basically minimizing what was going on, your whole life.
Sometimes people do need to speak their truth. IDK. This is how abusers get by. Because it becomes literally unconscionable for the victims to speak. Think about the implications of that. That it’s more harmful to the family and survivors to acknowledge the truth than to keep silencing the survivors, keep gaslighting everyone, keep pretending that nothing is wrong or was ever wrong.
satby
@raven: fantastic passage, thanks for this!
Another Holocene Human
@Howard Beale IV: Don’t say Lysenko … some idiots who don’t understand epigenetics will pop up to scream that Lysenko was right all along.
sigh…
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Really? You get horribly offended when you offer a bland sentiment about somebody you don’t know and the family member answers with “Actually, I’m not sorry so-and-so is dead. Long story, but let’s just say so-and-so can’t hurt anybody any more.”
And you feel like you ran into a raging Billo fan?
JPL
@2liberal: so far so good…
opiejeanne
@Mike J: You watching this? I know that Steve Raible announces on the radio, but I’m in SoCal and watching* these announcer clowns rooting for the Raiders. Bah.
Random thought I have a second computer handy. Maybe I can find that radio station and play that and turn off these ninnies.
*Hooray for Dish Anywhere!
Bonnie
The Seahawks are having their way with the hapless Oakland Raiders.
opiejeanne
@Bonnie: Yes, and the national announcers are almost cheering for the Raiders.
And I’m out of area right now so i can’t listen to Steve Raible unless I give ESPN some money. Or maybe it’s the NFL that wants my money. Blah.
raven
@satby: He was great.
Yatsuno
@opiejeanne: I’m quite enjoying this. I feel okay enough to go nap at halftime.
opiejeanne
@Yatsuno: I am too, just wish I could listen to Raible instead of this rabble.
raven
Acker Bilk, jazz clarinettest, dies aged 85
Heliopause
I’ll say this for Brandon Weeden; I’ve seen worse NFL quarterbacks.
Jasmine Bleach
@Botsplainer:
Instead, why not throw a party somewhere nearby afterwards? Send out a note before the funeral to everyone that there will be a family get together afterwards (with drinks, food, music–whatever you intend it to be), and as you see them at the funeral, say thanks and casually remind them of the party to keep it in people’s minds.
Try to throw the most fun, outrageous, and best party you can. Your grandmother probably would hate it, and when you think back on her life and funeral you can instead think about what a great time that party was . . .
Incidentally, my mother, when she goes, wants her funeral to be a party with lots of fun and dancing. I’ve always thought that was a great idea . . .
Heliopause
@opiejeanne:
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, in that their job is to keep the half dozen people in the Bay Area that are watching this from switching to the 49ers-Rams.
Mike J
@raven: That’s Mr. Acker Bilk to you. And everybody else. That’s how he was billed on his hit single.
Ruckus
@Jasmine Bleach:
When my time comes I’d like the truth to be told. You want to celebrate my death? Have a party. You want to morn my death? Have a party. I won’t care, other than I won’t be able to attend, I’ll be dead. No one shows up? I’ll still be dead.
Cain
@hilts:
That is so strange.. I mean if you’re a business to weather, having something you can talk about all the time and have more viewership sounds like a good thing. I would think they would embrace that shit..
Corner Stone
@Ruckus:
Shouldn’t be a problem.
“That guy who slept on other peoples’ couches for the last 15 years?”
“Yeah”
“Ok, sounds like pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off? Pringles?”
“Yep. Sounds about right.”
Bill Murray
@Heliopause: so someone else remembers Kim McQuilken
tybee
@Svensker:
this.
rhubarb
@Libby’s person: Try green tomato mincemeat (sorry I don’t have a link). I once made some and used it in a strudel and it was pretty tasty.