Dead zone

How are we supposed to act, or feel, when people die?

Our reflexive response when someone tells us of a death is, “I’m sorry to hear that.” We say this whether or not we’re actually sorry to hear it. It just seems like the polite thing to say.

We may not be sorry, though I assume what we’re really saying is, we’re sorry that somebody we know is experiencing a loss. And if it’s somebody we knew and liked who died, then we genuinely feel some degree of grief.

It’s pretty much accepted that you’re not allowed to be happy when somebody dies, unless it’s someone despicable like Hitler or Bin Laden or Urban Meyer. (for all you wearing blue jean shorts, that was just a joke.)

One of my professors from UGA, Conrad Fink, died recently. Now, I didn’t know him well at all, but I knew a few people who did, and they always spoke highly of him. I took one journalism class from him, and a few things stood out in my memory:
• He would throw erasers at me when I was drifting off to sleep or not paying attention in his class, which was often.
• He told a highly entertaining story about when, during his days as a reporter, he had a testy encounter with the King of Borneo. I don’t know nor care if it was true, but it was a great story.
• He always said to write for the “Kansas City milkman”, which meant keep your stories simple and understandable so even the least educated among us could enjoy them. I guess today he might say to write them for people who watch Jersey Shore.
• He pulled me into his office one day and told me that he thought I was the best writer in his class (is this bragging? Probably so), but that I didn’t have any “fire in my belly” and I should forget journalism and go somewhere like Coca-Cola and get a job in the public relations department. I was offended and angered by this and went on to have a lucrative 10-year career in newspapers, which ended when I went to Coca-Cola and got a job in their public relations department.

So even though I didn’t know Professor Fink that well or for that long, he did have an impact on my life, and I did note his death with some sadness.

Then recently, another person from my past died, and this was somebody I didn’t care for too much. He was generally not a nice person, thought most people thought he was. I found him to be dishonest, manipulative and mean-spirited. Maybe, as hard as this is to fathom, he just didn’t like me, so I never got to see whatever good side he might have had.

So while I didn’t pop open a cold bottle of Pink Champale when I learned he had died, I didn’t feel particularly sad, either. And I didn’t feel bad about not feeling sad. Maybe this makes me a bad person. I just don’t know.

The idea of death used to freak me out. I can remember going to funeral homes when some great-aunt or another died, and my mother would go to the casket and proclaim, “Oh, she looks so pretty!” Uh, hello, mom, no she doesn’t. Aunt Jenny is DEAD! She does not look pretty. She looks stuffed.

In The Return of the King, Gandalf tells one of the hobbits, “Death is just another part of the journey.” Of course, that was easy for him to say, since he had already died and been resurrected by that time. Oh, and he was a wizard. But I guess if that’s the case, we should just look at it as a chance to wish people well on the rest of their journey, and if we didn’t like them, hope we don’t run into them again when our time comes.