R.I……P???

A good friend of mine, Jake,  passed away a while ago. He was a great, charismatic, considerate person whowas known and loved by almost all of his high school. When he died a few months back, he was given a very nice, school-wide funeral. On a personal note, I’ve been fortunate enough to not have lost any close relatives, or even anyone at all that I knew, until now. After 18 years of my tragedy-void life, Jake was the first person I cared about that I had to see leave us. So the following funeral, was the first I’ve witnessed. Recently though, there was a big talent-show-like program to raise money for the newly created scholarship in his name. With both of these events, I noticed a few things.

1 – sometimes people use someones death for their own benefit. Making speeches that beat it to the curb, subconsciously enjoying the little bit of limelight they get. The second event I mentioned above seemed like a ploy for the person who organized it to check off on his eagle project, and the “performers” to get a little bit of fame. I think some of the speeches you’ll undoubtedly hear at any funeral instantly begin to engage in a awkward competition of who can say the saddest words, make the most people cry, and bring up the largest amount of those recycled phrases associated with any death for no apparent reason. I constantly heard “he’ll shine down on us” or “he’s an angel.” Give me a break. The guy finally was called home by God, and is rocking out at the big party in the sky. People just say that because they’ve heard it before and think it’s the right thing to say (or maybe to win the above-stated competition). He can probably see us when he wants to, but I think people make death to be more of a fairy tale than it really is.

2 – I think this next idea applies to lots of situations, not just in time of loss. People seem to be driven to expect they will be in more of a dramatic situation than they really are. I see many people dealing with situations as if it is more of an end-all, apocalyptic situation. Although I am fairly certain of this subconscious tendency, I’m like 90% sure that it stems from media. Movies, TV, and other media, but the first two especially. People are constantly exposed to readily-available scenes of people crying and dying and characters put in the most dramatic of situations. I think when a somewhat dramatic situation arises, some people think , “Oh my God, I’m in one of those situations now”, (when they’re really not at all) and subconsciously act as such, half-heartedly acting for some invisible audience. Obviously losing a loved one is quite the tragic situation, but I could still see some overreacting and subconsciousness dramatizing at the second event. There was a speech made where the person actually said “I thought I’d be crying by now”. Yeah, because you already paid your respect, let him go, and lived on. You wanted to make a speech, because you didn’t get to compete in the competition from before, and you had some subconscious need to try to make this situation more dramatic than it needed to be. She read two poems that didn’t even make sense. It was so awkward, going back and forth from a crappy homemade play to a too dramatic speech.

The second event bugged me more than anything else, because I think it’s natural to pay your respects and LIVE ON. The dead don’t get to live, so the living should, and I don’t know how alive I’d feel if I was making random insincere speaches  about our dead loved ones, months and months after the fact. There were even random plays and a crappy band playing. It seemed like they dug Jake up and rolled him around or something by trying to bring back all the emotional stuff when so much time had passed. Rest in peace means rest in peace.