OddThinking

I haven’t been posting here regularly for the past couple of months. The reason is that I have been rather distracted; my father was diagnosed with a fatal illness in April, and passed away this week.

This isn’t a “how I feel today” kind of blog. (If you want LiveJournal you know where to look.) So I have been rather quiet, rather than describing in detail the unpleasant experience that he and his family have been through recently.

Penn Jillette has sometimes remarked that during times of stress, people keep doing the same thing that they normally do, only more so.

My father, Joe, was not a sentimental man. After his diagnosis, Joe expressed this even more strongly. He objected to the sentimentality and the hypocrisy of funeral ceremonies. He pooh-poohed the very concept of “closure”. He did not want eulogies, flowers or services of any kind. I, along with the rest of my family, respect that wish and I am treading carefully here.

Nonetheless, what I normally do is tell stories – I got that in part from Joe. Re-telling a few of his stories, and my stories about him doesn’t seem to me to be crossing into the danger zone of contradicting his wishes – especially if I avoid sentimentality.

Look for some of these stories to appear here in the next few days.