Mommy had said how important it is to get mail and have visitors when you’re sick. I said there’s no way i could have sent Pastor Bill a card because of my obsession with honesty and the power of words and all that. I don’t like him and had schadenfreude. There was no way i could have honestly sent a card that said anything like “I was sorry to hear about your illness” or “I hope you recover soon” or anything like that. I laughed/twitched whenever i was in church and George (not my brother) would say things like “We’re all praying for you, Bill, hoping you get better, blah blah blah,” because I was like, “Hi, i’m sitting here and i don’t care if he ever gets better and would in fact be right pleased if he never came back to pastor this church,” though i do have enough tact that i only actually said that to my parents.
I do appreciate the thoughtfulness of people sending cards, calling, visiting, and there’s something to be said for the power of such gestures even if you don’t really mean them, but ultimately i would say don’t do them if you don’t mean them because it makes such gestures meaningless if people just do them because they’re expected to.
Similarly i get upset by the social convention of “Oh how good to see you, we must get together again,” because so often people don’t actually mean it, and i think that’s dishonest and hurtful.
Grandma was complaining that no one was at Ruth Hartshorn’s funeral on Saturday. Her surviving husband is at that age where you’ve outlived most of your friends, but she thought church people . I told my parents that at my funeral, or rather a funeral at which i was the chief mourner, i don’t want lots of random people showing up. If you cared about the dead person and have come to pay your respects, fine, but don’t show up just to offer your sympathies and support to me if you don’t even know me. Then i’ll just get weirded out and be extra-upset ‘cause you’re intruding on my mourning. My father made me laugh with the image of a velvet rope and a bouncer.
