"Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three pm come".
She sounds like a wonderful person.
Funny enough, I died in 2015. Well, I thought I was clever, I added a sort of obituary on my blog's RSS to publish only if I don't write for a whole year. In php I used strtotime(+1 year) , but for testing I tried +1 minute. I forgot to adjust and deployed. So in 2015, the top post on my RSS was that I was probably dead and someone should check on me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butter...
I’m sure more heartfelt words were shared outside the scope of this obit.
Also when I first saw the headline, I (incorrectly) assumed it was an auto-posted obituary and clicked to see the tech. I could see in this scary political climate, with US morality on the rise, and a few prominent new "DeathTech" startups, this audience might be curious about tech for EOL planning. Long time HNers (the ones who are more likely to vote on articles) are aging and that cohort are now in their 40s–50s and increasingly aware of their mortality as they themselves, family and friends confront challenging medical issues.
I think it's of interest because (1) it implicitly presents a question of how to go about a premeditated end-of-life message to be shared in an online space.
And (2) relative to typical prose in this context, it's a bit cheeky, more like an "aw, shucks" than a grand tragedy. Something about it reached across the veil of impersonality, again in a digital space. And to me at least it's raising a question of how you choose to express yourself and how that choice gives you life in the ability to be regarded and known by others, and perhaps an even more general question of how we're all already doing something like that on a day to day basis. I don't think anyone who voted on it said any of that stuff out loud but you could feel those themes as implicitly present even if it's hard to put your finger on exactly what they are.
To your point I don't think it's the only message that has questions like those behind it, but I don't think it's ever been teed up for community discussion quite like this.
Edit: I'll obviously get downvoted for this, but that's my point of view. I'm from Europe.
But fuck, I wish I had that. This was so nice to read, and must be a great comfort to her family in the midst of devastation.
I'm glad that this works for some people but in the west we have this extremely odd prejudice towards real grief. I'm convinced that it isn't healthy and not acknowledging that someone dying is extremely sad for them and their family doesn't allow for real healing.
I know my dad felt that when his father passed. I did too, but not as much as he did, because my dad was taking his dad to doctor's appointments and caring for him after surgery and generally seeing him in very vulnerable circumstances.
I just don't at all think that this is equivalent to not acknowledging that someone is dying.
When he did pass, I was sad, but less sad, I think, than I would have been. It was an interesting experience.
Grieving is important. To do it properly be close to those who need it. Dying is a process and not a moment. Be there for those that need it and give yourself room to do it properly as well.
This just stinks of "don't ever show real emotion" US 'tough guy-ism' as it sometimes translates via women. I remember being pressured to be either fun/funny or kind/nurturing. Actual real expression, expression of sadness, depression, etc was always something I was discouraged to do or even punished for. I remember feeling weird when I went to therapy. Like "Oh wait, I can just...talk about my real emotions?"
I had a "jokey gal" persona for a long time, so maybe this hits closer to home for me, and it was a reflection of my social anxiety and unwillingness and lack of support in life to ever be vulnerable. So when I see the "jokester" persona, I always pause because it often comes from a bad place. I could even see myself doing this when I was younger. Today, I would never because the younger woman I was no longer exists and she would have done this out of fear and suffering and denial of self, not "fun."
There's a certain immature, 'won't touch one's emotions' 'Michael Scott-ism' here that's off-putting. A sort of "Fun gal in the office" energy that betrays immaturity and even insecurity. The desire to be popular and have high-social capital extends even to death it seems.
I lost a parent a while ago. I would not have appreciated a "jokey" display at all. It was the saddest day of my life and even today I still mourn. I'll never get over it.
And a sort of productivity culture-esque, "haha we had our fun, now go back to work/school," or whatever. In reality, a lot of people need time to grieve. I wish I took off more work than the 1 day bereavement I got from work and the 1 pto day I had. I was a high-key mess for at least a couple weeks, and a low-key mess for months. I would find myself crying randomly. I would have these sudden intrusive thoughts like "What does it matter, we just die in the end." It took a while to get where I am today where I have optimism about life and where I see my parent as gone forever, and without feeling pain about it.
As for cultures that have celebratory funerals, well, this isn't one of those cultures, so its not normal to expect people to conform to that. And even in those cultures there's a different more somber ceremony attached to the celebration.
That being said, maybe this was her coping mechanism, and it got her this far. Great. That worked for her. But for the grieving people, maybe "jokey gal" persona isn't the best. shrug, its not a big deal, but this being posted here as some kind of amazing and exceptional thing isn't great either. This has problems worth mentioning. I think we all think we can just 'fix things' or 'cheat the suffering of death' by being creative or different, but the human brain remains as-is. It wants to grieve and often there's no getting out of that. Loss is painful and can't just be turned into fun by will alone. I think in most cultures this would be off-putting if not offensive. On the other hand, we have to respect how people wanted to be remembered.
That being said, the stages of grief book helped me. It validated my pain and showed me a path. I hope her friends and family find what works for them. Maybe "Michael Scott-isms" worked for her, that's fine, but it definitely is not going to work for everyone. So just a reminder, there are many ways to grief, and some will do it via comedy, but its also okay to go down a traditional route or even get into therapy over it. Its also okay to cry today and laugh tomorrow and vice-versa. Sometimes I think of my parent and just chuckle at a memory. Life can be complex this way.
She seemed fun and nice. I hope the above isn't too critical, but its more for us still living. I hope she is now resting in peace. Or, as I am a Buddhist, that her karma was found a fortunate rebirth.
In an era of generative texts and humanity pushing the bounds of what to do with them, how does one verify the authenticity of something like this? Does it matter?
~1500 people (US) die of this per year.
I sense a bit of AI in this obit. Most tellingly, a suspicious emdash after Chipotle is a definite flag.
The way the author describes post-death events in the past tense, non-hypothetically, indicates that someone other than Murphy had a hand in its authorship.
(Would an author really write "Check it out, it’s called “F Off Cancer” by Linda Brossi Murphy"? That's not even the title of the book!)
The title is close enough. Censored, missed a comma and skipped the secondary title. Very human choices and mistakes. Not sure why we'd expect a dying loving woman to be hyper focused on getting the title of her book right.
Good writers have been using em dashes for years -- that's why AIs keep using them. :)
Perhaps there is some moderation happening on the blog.
previous comment: could have been programmed as `Time.now - 1.day` to be published if no action was taken on the day of
It is very tricky though. You probably want to have a bunch of fail-safes in place.
After I graduated, I had a brief stint as a Nursing Home Administrator until David Jr. was born, then stayed home and hatched a couple more pups over the next few years. In 2000, I formally joined the family real estate business and worked there until I was diagnosed… with ALS (I kept working through my long battle with cancer 12 years ago) … Yikes!! Cancer…THEN ALS. Ugh, Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up! I am very proud of the book I wrote about my journey through cancer. Check it out, it’s called “F Off Cancer” by Linda Brossi Murphy.
