A Tweet Storm I Tweet-Stormed (Elaborated)
The husband of one of my cousins, died of cancer a few days ago. My dad sent me an e-mail informing me of his death. Which brings me to this point: I hate the way Americans talk about death.
People don't "pass on" or "pass away" or "go home"; we die.
A few days after, there's not a "service" or a "home-going"; there’s a funeral.
The guy you pay is an undertaker, not a "mortician" or a "funeral home director".
There’s a grave not a "place of rest", and it is prepared by a gravedigger.
We do with our language what we do with bodies: we pretty them up to protect ourselves from the most predictable fact of life: death. The words are washed of meaning, childish, and unhealthy.
The directly aggrieved may take comfort in abstraction through euphemism, but there’s no reason for the rest of us to wrap ourselves in the same blankets so we can pretend it’s not cold and everything’s fine.